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THE 

JBLOODY BUOY, 

THROWN OUT AS A 

Warning to the Political Pilots of America 5 

OR, A 

FAITHFUL RELATION 

OF A 

Multitude of Acts of Horrid Barbarity, 

SUCH AS 

The Eye never witnessed, the Tongue never expressed, 

or the Imagination conceived, until the 

Commencement of the 



THE THIRD EDITION; 

With additional Notes, and a copious Appendi;^. 

BY PETER PORCUP][J>JE.j^oy7 J 

The Annals of your boasted Revolution will serve as a Bloody 
Buoyy warning the Nations of the Earth to keep aloof from the 
mighty Ruin Abbe Maury's Speech to the J^Tational Assembly, 



PHILADELPHIA : 

Printed for, and sold by, P. M. Davis. 

1823. 



-f^'f 






/ 



TABLE 



QF SOME OP THE MOST STRIKING FACTS. 

Massacre of six hundred persons in one day at Avignon. 

A child brought by the murderers to see his father put to death. 

A lad cuts a hole in the cheek of a priest, to hold up his head 

by, while another cuts it off. 
Horrid massacre of the priests at Paris. 
A man tears out a woman's heart reeking, and bites it with his 

teeth. 
Women roasted alive, and their flesh cut off and presented to 

men for food. 
Phillipe cuts off the heads of his father and mother, and brings 

them to his club, as a proof of his patriotism. 
A father leads his son to death. 
Two women tied naked to the guillotine, while their husbands 

are executed. 
Execution of Robespierre and Henriot. 
Women make little guillotines as playthings for their children. 
A child of ten years old accuses his mother, who is executed. 
Sans-culotte oath. 
Republican Marriages. 
Carrier first satisfies his lust, and then guillotines the women 

who were the objects of it. 
Most brutal barbarity of some Negroes, and still more brutal of 

some French soldiers. 
An order for throwing forty women from the top of a rock into 

the sea, which is executed. 
Dreadful description of a prison, containing women and chil- 
dren. 
Shooting of women, stripped naked. 
Decree, forbidding people to solicit the pardon of their friends. 



IV TABLE. 

Drowning of priests. 

Particular account of a drowning. 

A great number of women, many of whom had children at their 

breasts, drowned. 
Sixty persons suffocated under the hatches of a drowning boat. 
A man shoots at his father. 
Seven thousand five hundred persons shot. 
Shocking account of several hundreds of women and little chil- 
dren, perishing in cold and filth. 
Dead bodies on the banks of the river devoured by dogs, &c. 
Murder of ninety priests. 
Hands of the prisoners chopped off. 

People bargain with the executioners for the clothes of the pri- 
soners as they are going to be shot. 
Women, and children of all ages shot. 
A young lad chops off the head of a woman while he sings the 

Carmagnole. 
A woman lying dead and a child sucking at her breast. 
A man shows his sabre and boasts that he had just cut off sixty 

heads with it. 
One invites another to taste the brains of an aristocrat. 
O'Sullivan boasts of his adroitness at sticking people, and brags 

of having led his brother to execution. 
Goullin beats his own father on his death-bed, and says no man 

ought to be accounted a good revolutionist who has not the 

courage to drink a glass of human blood. 
Children tied to the guillotine while the blood of their parents 

run on their heads. 
A cut-throat wears the ears of persons murdered pinned to his 

national cockade. 
The same carries about him the private parts of murdered men 

which he shows to the women. 
The women of Paris cut off the same from the Swiss-guards. 
A general murders children at the breast, and offers to lie with 

their mothers. 
Women delivered in the mud and water, at the bottom of the 

drowning boats. 
A child torn from a woman's body, and stuck on a ba3'^onet, and 

thus carried at the head of a number of persons going, to be 

drowned. 



TABLE. V 

Women with child ripped open, and the embryo stuck on pikes. 

The Convention applauds the invention of the drowning boats, 
as an honour to France. 

A man's heart torn from his body and placed palpitating on a 
table before the magistrates. 

Murder of Mr. Mauduit : his entrails trailed along the street. 

Most horrible murder of the Mayor of St. Denys. 

Expulsion of a priest at Trois Rivieres, upwards of fourscore 
years old. 

A woman's breasts torn off, and thrown on the floor. 

Gobet, the Constitutional Bishop of Paris, solemnly abdicates 
the Christian Religion. 

A month's guillotining. 

A man cut to pieces in presence of his wife. 

A man's feet burnt off. 

Another's hair and eyebrows torn off. 

A baker murdered, and his head carried and thrown down be- 
fore his wife. 

The most savage cruelty that the sun ever beheld. 



, A 2 



INTRODUCTION, 



THE object of the following work was, and 
isj to give the people of this happy land a striking 
and experimental proof of the horrible eifects of 
anarchy and infidelity. 

The necessity of such an undertaking, at this 
time, would have been, in a great measure, pre- 
cluded, had our public prints been conducted with 
that impartiality and undaunted adherence to 
truth, which the interests of the community and 
of suffering humanity demanded from them. But, 
so far from this, the greatest part of those vehicles 
of information have most industriously concealed, 
or glossed over, the actions as well as the motives 
of the ruling powers in France ; they have extenua- 
ted all their unheard-of acts of tyranny, on the false 
but specious pretence, that they were conducive 
to the establishment of a free government; and, 
one of the editors has not blushed to declare, that 
" It would be an easy matter to apologize for all 
" the massacres^ that have taken place in that 
" country." 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

We have seen, indeed, some exceptions ; some 
few prints that have not dishonoured themselves 
by going this length ; but even these have observ- 
ed a timid silence, and have avoided speaking of 
the shocI^|ag barbarities of the French, with as 
much caution as if we were to partake in the dis- 
grace, and as if it was in our power to hide them 
from the world and from posterity. If they have, 
now and then, given way to a just indignation, 
this has been done in such a manner, and has 
been so timed, as to do them but little honour. 
They have acted the part of the tyrannized peo- 
ple of Paris : they have huzza'd every succeeding 
tyrant, while on the theatre of power, and, the 
instant he was transferred to a scaffold, they have 
covered him with reproach. They have attribu- 
ted to factions, to individuals, what was the work 
©f the national representatives, and of the nation 
itself. They have, in short, inveighed against the 
atrocities of the fallen assassins, while they have, 
in the same breath, applauded the principles on 
which they acted, and on which their survivors 
and their partizans do still act. 

Thus has the liberty of the press, a liberty of 
which we so justly boast, been not only useless to 
us, during this terrible convulsion of the civilized 
world, but has been so perverted as to lead us 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

into errors, which had well nigh plunged us into 
the situation of our distracted allies. Nor are we 
yet secure. Disorganizing and blasphemous prin- 
ciples have been disseminated among us with but 
too much success ; and, unless we profit from the 
awful example before us, we may yet experience 
all the calamities that heaven and earth now call 
on us to deplore. 

Fully impressed with this persuasion, the au- 
thor of these sheets ventured to undeceive the 
misguided ; to tear aside the veil, and shew to a 
yet happy people the dangers they had, and have 
yet, to fear. With this object in view, he made 
sure of meeting with the approbation of all good 
men, and, if any judgment is to be formed from 
the rapid sale of the work, he was not deceived. 

He foresaw, that the work would be attacked 
as a fabrication ; but, he now repeats, that the 
materials were collected from the works referred 
to, all of which were written by Frenchmen, and 
all, except one, from which only a few extracts 
are made, printed at Paris ; and he begs leave to 
add here, that the original French books were 
read by Mr. Benjamin Davies and others in this 
city, before the translation was made. In short, 
the author solemnly declares, that he has related 
the facts as he found them ; he has named the 



X INTRODUCTION. 

book, and even the page, from which each fact 
is taken ; and, as the advocates for French huma- 
nity have as good an opportunity as he of coming 
at those books, let them detect his errors, or, if 
thej will, his falsehoods, and publish them to the 
world : but let them not take up the book and 
call it a bundle of falsehoods, without being able 
to prove the falsity of one single sentence contain- 
ed in it. The people of this country have now 
their eyes open; they are no longer to be duped 
or bullied out of the truth; and what is here re- 
lated, they will most certainly believe, till they 
see it opposed by something better than bare as- 
sertion. 



THE 

BLOODY BUOY, &c 



CHAP. I. 

Facts taken from Uhistoire du Clerge Francois, 
or the History of the French Clergy, by the 
Abbe BarrueL 

IT will be recollected by the greatest part of 
my readers, that, soon after the beginning of the 
French Revolution, the National Assembly con- 
ceived the plan of destroying the religion of their 
forefathers. In order to effect this they separat- 
ed the Gallican church from that of Rome, and 
imposed an oath on the clergy, which they could 
not take, without becoming apostates in the fullest 
sense of the word. All the worthy and conscien- 
tious part of that body refused of course, and this 
refftsal was made a pretext to drive them from 
their livings, and fill the vacancies with such as 
had more pliant consciences, principles better 
adapted to the impious system which the leaders 
in the Assembly had prepared for their too credu- 
lous countrymen. 



12 

The ejectment of the priesthood was attended 
with numberless acts of most atrocious and wan- 
ton crueky : these have been recorded by the Abbe 
Barruel^ in a work entitled, The History of the 
French Clergy ; and, though what is here to be 
found will dwindle into nothing, when compared 
to what I have extracted from other works, yet 
it could not be wholly omitted, without shewing 
a degree of insensibility for the sufferings of these 
men, that I am persuaded the reader would not 
have excused. I shall therefore begin the relation 
with some extracts from that work. 

It will be observed, that these extracts, as well 
as all those that compose this compilation, are an 
abridged translation from the French : but, as far 
as relates to those contained in this chapter, the 
American reader may easily verify the translation 
by examining the English edition of the Abbe 
BarrueVs work, which is to be found in most parts 
of the Union. 



■Page 104. 

Soon after the first National Assembly had de- 
creed, that the Comtat of Avignon belonged to the 
French nation, an army of assassins, of whom one 
Jourdan, sur-named the Cut-throat, was the com- 
mander, took possession of the unfortunate city of 
Avignon. The churches were immediately pil- 
laged, the sacred vases profaned and carried off; 



IS 

the altafs levelled to the ground. The prisons 
were soon filled, and the unhappy victims were re- 
leased only to suffer death. A deep pit was dug 
to receive their dead bodies, six hundred of which 
were thrown into it, mangled and distorted, before 
ten o'clock the next day. Among them was Mr. 
Nolhac, a priest, in the eightieth year of his age. 
He had been thirty years rector of St. Symphorien, 
a parish which he preferred to all others, and 
which he could not be prevailed on to quit for a 
more lucrative one, because he would not desert 
the poor. During his rectorship he had been the 
common father of his parishioners, the refuge of 
the indigent, the comforter of the afflicted, and 
the friend and counsellor of every honest man. 
When the hour of danger approached, his friends 
advised him to fly ; but no intreaties could pre- 
vail on him to abandon his flock : " No," said the 
good old man, "I have watched over them in the 
" halcyon days of peace, and shall I now leave 
" them midst storms and tempests, without a guide, 
" without any one to comfort them in their last 
" dreary moments ?" — Mr. Nolhac, who, till now;, 
had been respected even by the Cut-throats, was 
sent to the prison the evening before the execu- 
tion. His appearance and his salutation, were 
those of a consoling angel : " ] come my children, 
'' to die with you : we shall soon appear in the 
" presence of that God whom we serve, and who 
" will not desert us in the hour of death." He 
fortified their drooping courage, administered the 
last consolatory pledges of his love, and the next 



14 

day embraced and cheered each individual as he 
was called forth by the murderers. 

Two of these stood at the door with a bar of 
iron in their hands, and as the prisoners advan- 
ced knocked them down : the bodies were then 
delivered over to the other ruffians, who hacked 
and disfigured them with their sabres, before they 
threw them into the pit, that they might not after- 
wards be known by their friends and relations. 
When the cut-throats were dispersed, every one 
was anxious to find the body of Mr. Nolhac. It 
was at last discovered by the cassock, and the 
crucifix which he wore on his breast. That breast 
had been pierced in fifty places, and the skull was 
entirely mashed. 



Page 210. 

Several priests were conducted to Lagrave, 
where they were told that they must take the 
oath,^ or sufier death. Among them was a Sul- 
pician of 98 years of age, and a young Abbe of 
the name of Novi. The whole chose death, the 
venerable Sulpician leading the way. The trial 
of Mr. Novi was particularly severe : the ruffians 
brought his father to the spot, and told him if he 

* This oath amounted to neither more nor less than direct 
perjury, since, by taking it, they must break the oath they had 
made when they entered the priesthood. 



15 

could persuade his son to swear, he should liv* 
The tender old man, wavering, hesitating between 
the feelings of nature and the duties of religion, at 
last yields to parental fondness, throws his arms 
round his child's neck, buries his face in his bosom, 
and with tears and sobs presses his compliance. 
" Oh ! my child, my child, spare the life of your 
*« Father!"— ''My dearest Father !— My dearest 
" Father," returned the Abbe, "I will do more, 
" I will die worthy of you and my God. You 
"educated me a Catholic: I am a priest, a servant 
" of the Lord. It will be a greater comfort to you 
" in your gray hairs, to have your son a mar- 
" tyr than an apostate." — The villains tear them 
asunder, and amidst the cries and lamentations of 
the father, extend the son before him a bleeding 
corpse. 



Page 2U, 

In the same town, and on the same day, the axe 
was suspended over the head of Mr. Teron, when 
the revolutionists bethought them that he had a 
son. This son was about ten years of age, and, 
in order to enjoy the father's torments and the 
child's tears both at a time, he was brought to the 
place of execution. His tears and cries gave a 
relish to the ferocious banquet. After tiring them- 
selves with the spectacle, they put the father to 
death before the eyes of the child, whom they 
besmeared with his blood. 



16 

Page 217. 

After having spoken of the conduct of the ma- 
gistrates and mob at Bourdeaux, the historian 
mentions the death of Mr. Langoiran and the 
Abbe Dupuis, thus : 

At the entrance of the court-house, the Abbe 
Dupuis received a first wound ; others soon level- 
led him to the ground. A young lad, of about 
fifteen or sixteen, cut a hole in the cheek with a 
knife, to hold up the head by, while others were 
employed in haggling it from the body, which was 
still in agonies. This operation not succeeding 
in such a crowd, they took hold of the legs, and 
dragged the carcass about the streets, and round 
the ramparts. 

Mr. Langoiran had but just set his foot on the 
first step of the stairs, when he was knocked 
down. His head was hacked oif in an instant, 
and a ruffian held it up, crying aloud : "off with 
" your hats ! long live the nation." The bareheaded 
populace answered : " long live the nation." The 
head was then carried round the town as a signal 
of a triumph, gained by a tumultuous populace and 
ten thousand soldiers under arms, over a poor de- 
fenceless priest. 



17 



Page 21S. 

The 14th of July, so famous in the annals of 
the Revolution, was this year celebrated at Limo- 
ges, by the death of Mr. ChabroL He was a most 
useful member of society ; distinguished round 
his neighbourhood as a bone-setter ; he was at 
once the surgeon and the pastor of his parishi- 
oners ; and among his murderers were some of 
those who owed to him the use of their limbs. 
He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and 
indued with uncommon bodily strength. His 
death certainly was not that of a Christian mar- 
tyr ; but it deserves particular notice, as a striking 
proof of the cowardly ferocity of the French po- 
pulace. 

He had taken shelter at a magistrate's, and 
begged leave to elude the mob by going out of 
the house the back way ; but the magistrate durst 
not comply. He was forced to face his blood- 
thirsty pursuers. The indignant priest met them 
at the door ; the attack instantly began. Without 
a single weapon of defence, he had to encounter 
hundreds of the mob, armed with clubs, guns, 
sabres, and knives ; but, notwithstanding the ama- 
zing inequality, he held them a long time at bay. 
Some he felled to the ground, others ran from 
him ; he tore a bayonet out of his flesh, and stab- 
bing it into the breast of his adversary, sent him 
to die among the crowd. At last, weakened with 

6 /^ 



18 

m 

the loss of blood, he falls, and the base and mer- 
ciless scoundrels cry : to (he lamp-post. The idea 
of hanging reanimates the remaining drops in his 
veins. He rises upon his legs for the last time ; 
but numbers prevail ; again he falls, covered with 
wounds, and expires. His last groan is followed 
by the ferocious howl of victory : the dastardly 
assassins set no bounds to their insults ; they cut 
and hacked his body to pieces, and wrangled for 
the property of his ragged and bloody cassock. 



Page26S. 

As soon as the unfortunate Louis XVI. had 
been transferred from his throne to a loathsome 
prison, the National Assembly formed a plan for 
the total extirpation of the priests, and with them 
the Christian religion. The ministers of the altar 
w^ere seized and thrown into prison, or transport- 
ed, from every part of the country. At Paris 
about three hundred of them were shut up, in or- 
der to be massacred, and were actually put to 
death during the first and second weeks of Sep- 
tember, 1792. 

About one hundred and eighty of these unhap- 
py men were confined in the convent of the Car- 
melites. A troop of assassins commenced the 
massacre in the garden, where the priests were 
permitted to take the air; but while they were 
proceeding, a commissary arrived, and informed 



19 

them that the work was not to go on that way. 
There Were now about a hundred left alive, 
who were all ordered into the sanctuary of the 
church ; but, to get thither, they had to pass 
through a crowd of their murderers. One receiv- 
ed a ball, another a blow, and another a stab : so 
that, when arrived in the sanctuary, they present- 
ed a scene the most heart-piercing that eyes ever 
beheld. Some were dragged in wounded, others 
quite dead. Even here, though surrounded by a 
detachment of soldiers, the blood-thirsty mob 
rushed in upon them, and murdered several at the 
very altar's foot. The sanctuary of a Christian 
church was, for the first time since the blessed 
Redeemer appeared among men, filled with a 
promiscuous group of the living, the dying, and 
the dead. The marble pavement was covered with 
dirt and gore and mangled carcasses, and the sides 
of the altar splashed with blood and brains. 

The soldiers had not been brought to save the 
lives of the priests : the commissary who headed 
them was to execute a plan of more deliberate 
murder. The surviving priests were called out 
two at a time, and murdered in the presence of 
the commissary, who took their names down in 
a book, as he was answerable for their assassina- 
tion. Of all that were found here, only four or 
five escaped. — The like undistinguished carnage 
was exhibited at the other prisons. 

Every one of these men might have saved his 



20 



life by taking the proffered oath, yet not one of 
them condescended to do it. Let the infidel show 
us, if he can, any thing like this in the annals of 
his impious sect. 



Page 318. 

At the gate of the prison of La Force, the as- 
sassins were placed in two rows : the two ruffians, 
called judges, who gave the signal of death, were 
placed at the gate ; and as soon as the prisoner 
passed them, the assassins dispatched him with 
their knives or sabres, throwing the bodies in a 
heap at the end of the line. At the foot of this tro- 
phy of dead bodies, says the historian, we must 
now exhibit a scene of a different kind, in the 
murder of the princess of Lamballe. 

She had retired in safety to London ; but her 
attachment to the royal family would not suffer 
her to remain in her asylum, while they were ex- 
posed. Her fidelity was a crime that the per^ 
fidy of her enemies could never forgive. 

When this illustrious victim was brought forth, 
she was asked to swear an eternal hatred to the 
king, and the queen, and to royalty. '' The oath," 
said she, "is foreign to the sentiments of my 
*' lieart, and I will never take it." — She was in- 
stantly delivered over to the ministers of death. 
These ruffians pretend to caress her, stroke her 



21 

cheeks with their hands yet reeking with human 
blood, and thus conduct her along the line. 
Amidst all these insults her courage never desert- 
ed her. When arrived at the heap of dead bodies, 
she was ordered to kneel, and ask pardon of the 
nation : '' I have never injured the nation," she 
replied, *' nor will I ask its pardon." — " Down," 
said they, *' and ask pardon, if you wish to live." 
" No," said she, " I scorn to ask pardon from as- 
*' sassins that call themselves the nation: I will 
*' never bend my knee, or accept of a favour at 
" such hands." 

Her soul was superior to fear. '* Kneel and 
" ask pardon" was heard from a thousand voices, 
but in vain. Two of the assassins now seized her 
arms, and, pulling her from side to side, nearly 
dislocated her shoulders. " Go on, scoundrels," 
said the heroic princess, " I will ask no pardon." 
In a rage to see themselves thus overcome by the 
constancy of a woman, they dashed her down, 
and rushed in upon her with their knives and 
poignards. Her head soon appeared hoisted upon 
a liberty pike, and her heart, after being hit by 
one of the ruffians, was put into a bason. Both 
were carried in triumph through the streets of 
Paris. At last, after having feasted the eyes of 
the multitude, the bearers took them to the Tem- 
ple, now become a prison, where one of the two 
commissaries that guarded the king, called him to 
the window, that he might see it ; but his com- 
panion, a little more humane, prevented the un- 



22 

fortunate monarch from approaching.* A faulting 
fit, from hearing of the event, fortunately saved 
the queen from the heart-rending sight. 

The bod J stripped naked and the bowels hang- 
ing out, was exposed to view on the top of the 
murdered victims, where it remained till the mas- 
sacre was over. It was at last cut up like butch- 
er's meat. 



Page 327. 

A great fire was made in the Place Dauphine, 
at which many, both men and women were roast- 
ed. The Countess of Perpignan, with her three 

* The historian has here followed Doctor Moore ; but, Play- 
fair relates this matter rather differently. " The head," says 
he " was carried on a pole to the Temple, and exposed to the 
" view of the royal prisoners, who expected the same fate. The 
" king was compelled to approach the window and look at it : 
" the queen and madame Elizabeth had fainted away." — Here 
is a material difference. Perhaps one of the commissaries was 
a friend of Doctor Moore, as the chief of the massacrers, Bris- 
sot, was a friend of the Doctor's patron, Lord Lauderdale. 
The Doctor is, indeed, rarely to be depended upon : a man 
whose patron was the friend of the leading murderers was not 
well calculated to give an account of their actions. 

Flayfair adds, on this subject : " The Duke of Orleans gave 
" a dinner to some English Democrats that day, and was gra- 
" tified with the sight of this bloody trophy (the Princess' 
" head) just before they sat down to dinner." — It is not impos- 
sible but Doctor Moore and the Democratic Earl of Lauder- 
dale might be of the party. 



2$ 

daughters were dragged thither. They were strip- 
ped, rubbed over with oil, and then put to the fire. 
The eldest of the daughters, who was fifteen, 
begged them to put an end to her torments, upon 
which a young fellow shot her through the head. 
The cannibals, who were shouting and dancing 
round the fire, enraged to see themselves thus de- 
prived of the pleasure of hearing her cries, seized 
the too merciful murderer, and threw him into the 
flames. 

When the Countess was dead, they brought six 
priests, and, cutting off some of the roasted flesh, 
presented them each a piece to eat. They shut 
their eyes, and made no answer. The oldest of 
the priests was then stripped, and tied opposite 
the fire. The mob told the others, that perhaps 
they might prefer the relish of a priest's flesh to 
that of a Countess ; but they suddenly rushed into 
the flames. The barbarians tore them out to pro- 
long their torments ; not, however, before they 
were dead, and beyond the reach even of Parisian 
cruelty. 



Page 328e 

On Monday, September 3, at ten o'clock in the 
evening, a man, or rather a monster, named Phi- 
lippe, living in the street of the Temple, came to 
the Jacobin Club, of which he was a member; 
and, with a box in his hand, mounted the tribune. 



24 

Here he made a long speech on patriotism, con- 
cluding bj a declaration, that he looked upon 
every one who preferred the ties of blood and of 
nature to that of patriotic duty, as an aristocrat 
worthy of death ; and, to convince them of the 
purity and sincerity of his own principles, he 
opened the box, and held up by the gray hair, the 
bloody and shrivelled heads of his father and mo- 
ther, " which I have cut off," said the impious 
wretch, " because they obstinately persisted in not 
" hearing mass from a constitutional priest."* 
The speech of this parricide received the loudest 
applauses ; and the two heads were ordered to be 
buried beneath the busts of Anker storm and Bru- 
tus, behind the president's chair. "t 

The last fact related, is of such a horrid nature 
that, though so well authenticated, it would almost 
stagger our belief, had we not proof of so many 
others, which equal, if not surpass it. I shall here 
extract one from La Conjuration de Maximilien 

* That is, one of the apostates. 

t According to Monsieur Peltier, in his picture of Paris, the 
number of persons murdered in the different prisons of that 
city, from Sunday the 2d to Friday the 7th of September 1792, 
amounted to 1,005. To these, he says, should be added the 
poor creatures who were put to death in the hospital of Bicetre, 
and in the yards of la Salpetriere; those who were drowned ai 
the hospital of la Force ; and all those who were dragged out 
of the dungeons of the Conciergerie and the Chatelet, to be 
butchered on the Pont-au-Change, which may be computed, 
without exaggeration, at 8,000 individuals. 



25 

Robespierre, a work published at Paris in tiie year 
1795. 

The author, after speaking of the unnatural fe- 
rociousness which the revolution had produced in 
the hearts of the people, says (page 162) 1 will 
here give a proof, and a shocking one it is.— Gar- 
nier of Orleans had a son, who had been intend- 
ed for the priesthood, and had been initiated in 
the subdeaconship ; consequently he was attached 
to the Christian faith. His father one day seiz- 
ed him by the throat and led him to the revolution- 
ary tribunal, where he was instantly condemned ; 
nor would the barbarous father quit his child till 
he saw his head severed from his body. After 
the execution was over, the tribunal, ever as ca- 
pricious as bloody, feigned remorse, and were pro- 
ceeding to condemn the father ; but the National 
Convention, informed of the affair, annulled the 
process, and publicly applauded the conduct of 
the unnatural father, as an imitator of the repub- 
lican Brutus. 

In the extracts from the history of the French 
clergy, the proposed limits of this work has obliged 
me to forego the pleasure of mentioning a great 
number of facts, which reflect mfinite honour on 
that calumniated and unfortunate body of men, 
as well as on the Christian religion. The follow- 
ing trait, howeVer, I cannot prevail on myself to 
omit. 

C 



26 
Page 341. 

At Rheims lived a man, who, from the number 
of his years, might be called the dean of Christen- 
dom ; and, from the fame of his virtues, the priest, 
by excellence. He had long been known by no other 
name than that of the holy priest. This was Mr. 
Pacquot, rector of St. John's. When the revolu- 
tionary assassins broke into his oratory, they found 
him on his knees. A true and faithful disciple of 
Jesus Christ, heyielded himself into the hands of his 
executioners without so much as a murmur, and 
suffered himself to be led before the ferocious ma- 
gistrate, as a lamb to the slaughter. He crossed 
the street singing the psalms of David, while the 
sanguinary ruffians that conducted him, endea- 
voured to drown his voice by their blasphemies. 
At the threshhold of the town-hall an attempt was 
made to murder him, but the mayor interfered, 
saying to the people, " What are you about ? this 
*' old fellow is beneath notice. He is a fool : 
*' fanaticism has turned his brain." — These words 
roused the venerable old man. " No, Sir," says 
he, "I am neither a fool nor a fanatic, nor shall 
«' my life take refuge under such an ignominious 
' shelter. 1 wish you to know, that I was never 
^ more in my sober senses. These men have ten- 
* dered me an oath, decreed by the National As- 
' sembly. 1 am well acquainted with the nature 
' of this oath : I know that it is impious, and sub- 
' versive of religion. They leave me the choice 
" of the oath or death, and I choose the latter. 



27 

" I hope, Sir, I have convinced you, that I am in 
'' my senses, and know perfectly well what I am 
"about." — The nettled magistrate immediately 
abandoned him to the mob. " Which of you," 
said the old man, ''is to have the patriotic hon- 
" our of being my murderer ?" — " I am," says a 
man who moved in a sphere that ought to have 
distinguished him from a horde of ruffians. " Let 
" me embrace you then," says Mr. Pacquot ; 
which he actually did, and prayed to God to for- 
give him. This done, the hard-hearted villain 
gave him the first blow : his companions buried 
their bayonets in his emaciated breast. 

The reader's heart, I hope, will teach him the 
love and veneration that every Christian ought to 
feel for the memory of this evangelical old man. 

If the death of all the murdered priests was 
not marked with such unequivocal proofs of con- 
stancy and fidelity as that of Mr. Pacquot, it was, 
perhaps, because a like opportunity did not al- 
ways present itself. One thing we know ; that, 
by taking an oath contrary to their faith, they might 
not only have escaped the knives of their assassins, 
but might have enjoyed an annual income. Their 
refusing to do this is an incontrov^ertible testimony, 
that they were no impostors or hypocrites, but 
sincere believers of the religion they taught, and 
that they valued that religion more than life itself. 
This is the best answer that can possibly be given 
to all the scandalous and atrocious calumnies that 
their enemies and the enemies of Christianity have 
vomited forth against them. 



CHAP, 11. 

Facts taken from La Relation des CruaiiteSy com- 
raises dans Les Lyonnois, 

THE next work that presents itself, fallowing 
the cronological order, is La Relation des Cru- 
autes^ commises dans Les Lyonnois, or, The Rela- 
tion of the Cruelties, committed in the Lyonnese, 



Page 37. 

The grand scene of destruction and massacre 
was opened, in the once flourishing and opulent 
city of Lyons, by a public profanation of all those 
things, that had been looked upon as sacred. The 
murderers in chief, chosen from among the mem- 
bers of the National Convention, were, a play-ac- 
tor and a man who, under the old government, had 
been a bum-bailiff. Their first step was to bruti- 
fy the minds of the populace ; to extinguish the 
remaining sparks of humanity and religion, by 
teaching them to set heaven and an hereafter at 
defiance ; in order to prepare them for the massa- 
cres, which they were commissioned to execute. 

A mock procession w^as formed in imitation of 
those observed by the Catholic church. It was 



29 

headed by a troop of men bearing in their hands 
the chalices and other vases which had been taken 
from the plundered churches. At the head of the 
procession there was an Ass, dressed in the vest- 
ments of the priests that the revolutionary army 
had murdered in the neighbourhood of the city, 
with a mitre on his head. This beast, a beast of 
the same kind on which our Redeemer rode, now 
bore a load of crucifixes, and other symbols of the 
christian religion ; having the old and new testa- 
ment tied to his tail. When this procession came 
to the spot which had been fixed on for the pur- 
pose, the bible was burnt, and the Ass given to 
drink out of the sacramental cup, amidst the shouts 
and rejoicing of the blasphemous assistants. 

Such a beginning plainly foretold what was to 
follow. An undistinguished butchery of all the 
rich immediately commenced. Hundreds of per- 
sons, women as well as men, were taken out of 
the city at a time, tied to trees, shot to death, 
stabbed, or else knocked on the head. In the city 
the guillotine never ceased a moment ; it was 
shifted three times ; holes were dug at each place 
to receive the blood, and yet it ran in the gutters. 

It were impossible to describe this scene of car- 
nage, or to give an account of each act of the, till 
now, unheard-of barbarity : two or three, however, 
demand a particular mention. 

Kj /ml 



30 



Page 39. 

Madame Lauras, hearing that her husband was 
condemned, went, accompanied with her ten chil- 
dren, and threw herself on her knees before the 
ferocious Collot D'Herbois, one of the members 
of the Convention ; but no mercy could be ex- 
pected from a wretch whose business it was to 
kill. She followed her beloved husband to the 
place of execution, surrounded with her weeping 
offspring. On seeing him fall, her cries and the 
wildness of her looks but too plainly foretold her 
approaching end. She was seized with the pains 
of a premature child-birth, and was carried home 
to her house, where a commissary soon after ar- 
rived and drove her from her bed chamber and her 
house, from the door of which she fell dead into 
the street. 

Page 41. 

Two women, who had persisted in asking the 
life of their husbands, were tied, during six hours, 
to the posts of the guillotine. Their own hus- 
bands were executed before their eyes, and their 
blood sprinkled over them. 



Page 42. 
Miss Servan, a young lady of about eighteen. 



31 



was put to death because she would not discover 
the retreat of her father. 



Page 47. 

Madame Cochet was condemned for having 
put the match to a cannon during the siege, and 
for having assisted in her husband's escape. She 
was declared, by two surgeons, to be with child; 
but this was a reason of little weight with men 
whom we shall by and by see murdering infants, 
and even ripping them from the womb. She was 
instantly executed. 

Page 101. 

To these facts I shall add the death of Mau- 
petit. He v/as made prisoner during the siege, 
buried alive up to his neck, and in this situation 
had his head mashed to pieces with small cannon 
balls, which his enemies tossed at it with all the 
insulting grimaces of savages. 

Page 104. 

At Lyons the priests met with the same treat- 
ment as at other places, and honoured their deaths 
with the same unshaken fortitude. Twenty-seven 
were executed at one time, not one of whom had 



32 

condescended to accept of the shameful conditions 
that were offered, nor even to solicit a pardon 
from the vile and blasphemous assassins. 

During this murderous work the city of Lyons 
was struck with terror. The members of the 
Convention stuck up a proclamation, declaring all 
those, who should express the least symptoms of 
pity, suspected persons. When the blood had in 
some measure, ceased to flow, and the affrighted 
inhabitants ventured out of their houses, they were 
seen walking along the streets with their eyes 
fixed on the ground : men no longer stopped, 
shook hands, and gave each other good morrow. 
The fear of death was stamped on every face : 
children durst not ask after their parents, nor pa- 
rents ask after their children. 

The villages round about shared in the fate of 
the city. An apostate priest conducted a gang 
of ruffians, who carried fire and death before them 
among those good people, whose only crime was 
giving shelter to persons escaped from the mas- 
sacre. The charitable host and his guest were 
butchered together beneath the hospitable roof, 
while the wives and daughters were reserved to 
satisfy the brutal appetites of the murderers. 

In vain should I attempt to give the reader an 
adequate idea of the crimes, committed, by the 
order of the Convention, in this part of France. 
The author of La Conjuration de Robespierre 



S3 

says (page 159,) that in the space of a few 
months, the number of persons, who were mur- 
dered in the Lyonnese and in the surrounding fo- 
rests, amounted to two hundred thousand. 

I shall conclude this chapter with a fact or two 
taken from La Conjuration de Robespierre, 



Page 210. 

Though no torments could go beyond the 
merits of Robespierre and his colleagues, yet, even 
in the execution of these monsters, the Parisians 
discovered such traits of ferociousness as fully 
proved, that these grovelling tyrants had done no 
more than what they themselves would have 
done, had they been in their places. 

Robespierre had been wounded in his head and 
face; his jaws were held together with bandages. 
The executioner, before he placed his neck under 
the guillotine, suddenly tore off the bandages, let- 
ting the under jaw fall, while the blood streamed 
down his breast. The poor deserted wretch was 
kept some time in this frightful state, while the 
air resounded with the acclamations of the bar- 
barous populace. 



Page 209. 
Henriot had no other clothes on but a shirt and 



34 

a waistcoat, covered with dirt and blood. His 
hair was clotted, aud his assassinating hands were 
now stained with his own gore. He had been 
w ounded all over, one eye he kept shut, while 
the other was started from its socket, and held 
only by the fibres. This horrid spectacle, from 
which the imagination turns with disgust and af- 
fright, excited joy, and even mirth among the 
Parisians. *' Look at the scoundrel," said they, 
'* just as he was when he assisted in murdering 
*' the priests."* The people called on the carts 
to stop, and a group of women performed a dance 
round that in which the capital offenders rode. — 
When Henriot was stepping from the cart to the 
scaffold, one of the under-executioners, to divert 
the spectators, tore out the eye that was already 
loose. — What a hard-hearted wretch must he be 
who could perform an action like this ? and to 
what a degree of baseness and ferocity must that 
people be arrived, who could thus be diverted ! 



Page 163. 

We shall not be surprised that this thirst for 
human blood, and delight in beholding the tor- 
ments of the dying, were become so prevalent, 
when we know, that mock executions were be- 
come a sport. The women suspended to the necks 
of their sucking infants, corals, made in the 

* As if they had not approved of murdering the priests ? 



shape of the guillotine ; which the child, by the 
means of a spring, played as perfectly as the 
bloody executioner himself. 



Page 161. 

What could be expected from an education like 
this ? What could be expected from children who 
were taught to use an instrument of ignominious 
death as a play-thing ; who were taught to laugh 
at the screams of the dying, and who, in a man- 
ner, sucked in blood with their mothers' milk ? 
When assassinations became the sports of childreuj 
it was no wonder that the sentiments of nature 
were extinguished, and that perfidy and inhuma- 
nity took place of gratitude, filial piety, and all 
the tender affections. 

What I am now going to relate, the mothers of 
future generations will hear with affright. — A 
child of ten years of age had been scolded, per- 
haps whipped, by his mother. He ran to the re- 
volutionary tribunal, and accused her of being 
still attached to the Catholic religion. The accu- 
sation was admitted, the boy recompensed, and 
the mother executed in a few hours afterwards. 

Tell us, ye mothers, for you only can know, 
what this poor creature must feel at seeing her- 
self betrayed, and ready to be deprived of life, by 
the child she had borne in her womb, who but 



56 

the other day hung at her breast, and for whom 
alone, perhaps, she wished to live. 



Page 162. . ' 

In short, says the author, men contracted such 
a taste as excites horror even to believe it pos- 
sible. God forbid that I should enter into par- 
ticulars on this subject. The bowels of the rea- 
der would not admit him to proceed. Suffice it 
to say, that we have seen the time, when man 
was becoming the food of man. Those who prac- 
tised anatomy during the reign of terror, know 
but too well what I could say here, if compassion 
for the feelings of my readers did not prevent me. 

I cannot quit these facts without once more re- 
ferring the reader to the work, from which I have 
selected them. I wish him not to depend on my 
veracity for the truth of what he may find in a 
book written on the scene. La Conjuration de 
Robespierre is to be had almost any where : I 
have seen above a dozen copies of it in the hands 
of different persons. It was, as I have already 
said, published at Paris, and, therefore, we may 
rest assured, that the author has not exaggerated ; 
but, on the contrary, we see by the last article 
here quoted, that he was afraid to say all that 
truth would have warranted. 



CHAP. III. 

Facts selected from the Proces-Criminel des Mem- 
bres du Comite Revolutionnaire de Nantes, et 
du ci-devant Representant du peuple Carrier ; 
or, Trial of the Members of the Revolutionary 
Committee at Nantz, and of the Representative 
Carrier. 

THE work which we are now entering on was 
published at Paris during the last year ; but, as 
an introduction to the facts extracted from it, it 
will be necessary to give the reader a concise 
sketch of the progress of the Revolution down to 
the epoch when the work was published. 

The States-General, consisting of the three 
orders, the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Tiers- 
Etat, or commonalty, were assembled on the 4th 
of May, 1789. The deputies were all furnished 
with written instructions, in which they were po- 
sitively enjoined to make no innovations as to the 
form of government. Notwithstanding this, it is 
well known, they framed a constitution by which 
the government was totally changed, the nobility 
abolished, and the church rent from that of Rome. 
Their constitution, however, though established 
at the expense of thousands of lives, and though 
one of the most ridiculous systems of government 
that ever was invented, did not fail to meet with 

D 



38 

partizans ; and we have heard it extolled, in this 
country, as the master-piece of human wisdom. 

The first Assembly, which has been common- 
ly called the Constituent Assembly, ended its be- 
neficent labours on the 30th of September, 1791, 
and was immediately succeeded by another, which 
took the name of Legislative Assembly. Most 
men of sense foresaw that the second Assembly 
would improve upon the plan of destruction mark- 
ed out by the first. The Clergy and many men 
of family and fortune had been already driven 
from their homes and possessions, it remained for 
the Legislative Assembly to finish the work by 
seizing on their property and exposing it to sale : 
this they failed not to do. Persecution and mas- 
sacre increased daily ; but as the small remains of 
power left in the hands of the king was still an 
obstacle, or rather as the monarchy itself was an 
obstacle, they were determined to get rid of it. 
On the 10th of August, 1792, the king was de- 
throned (his fate is well known) and the daggers 
of the assassins were from that moment drawn, 
never more to be sheathed, but in the heart of 
some innocent victim. We have already seen 
something of the massacres which followed this 
event at Paris and other places ; but even these 
are trifles to what was to follow. 

On the 21st of September, 1792, the third As- 
sembly, generally called the National Convention, 
opened their session^ and though every individual 



39 

member had repeatedly taken an oath to mamtam 
the authority of the kmg, they at once declared 
France to be a republic. 

After the murder of the king, this Convention 
declared war against a great part of the powers 
of Europe ; and, in order to be in a situation to 
make head against their enemies, seized on all the 
precious metals in the country, or rather they en- 
acted such laws as obliged the poor oppressed 
people to bring it to their treasury, and receive in 
exchange a vile and worthless paper money. The 
churches were instantly pillaged, and no person 
dared appear with a watch, or any other article 
in gold or silver. 

The violation of property was only a part of 
their plan. The hearts of the lower orders of the 
people were to be hardened ; they were to be ren- 
dered brutal ; all fear of an hereafter was to be 
rooted from their souls, before they could be fit 
instruments in the hands of this hellish Assembly. 
With this object in view, they declared our bless^ 
ed Lord and redeemer to be an Impostor, forbade 
the acknowledgment of him, and the exercise of 
his worship. The churches were turned into pri- 
sons, stables, &c. and over the gateways of the 
burial grounds were written : '* This is the place 
of eternal sleep, '''^ 

Never surely was there a better plan for trans- 
forming a civilized people into a horde of cut- 
throats. It succeeded completely. The blood 



40 

now flowed at Paris in an unceasing stream. A 
permanent tribunal was established, whose only 
business was to condemn, and certify to the Con- 
vention that the executions went on according to 
the lists sent from its committees. 

Besides legions of executioners there were 
others of assassins. The command of these latter 
was given to those members of the Convention 
who were sent into the different parts of the coun- 
try. Terror preceded these harbingers of death 
and their footsteps were marked with blood. The 
sword, the fire, and the water, all became instru- 
ments of destruction. 

During this murdering time, which has justly 
assumed the name of the reign of terror, the lea- 
ders of several factions of the revolutionists them- 
selves received their reward on a scaffold, and,, 
among others, Robespierre and his accomplices. 
When these men fell, the Convention, according 
to its usual custom, ascribed all the cruelties, com- 
mitted during sometime before their death, to them 
alone, and the people, always eager for blood, 
now demanded the heads of those whom they had 
assisted in the murder of their countrymen. By 
sacrificing these its instruments, the Convention 
saw a fair opportunity of removing the infamy 
fi'om itself, and of perpetuating its power. In con- 
sequence, many of them were tried and executed, 
among others Carrier (a member of the Conven- 
tion) who had been stationed at Nantz, with the 
members of the revolutionary committee of that 



41 

unfortunate town. From the trial of these men 
it is that I have selected the facts which are to 
compose this chapter. The trial was before the 
tribunal at Paris, to which place the accused were 
carried from Nantz. 

It has been repeatedly asserted, by those who 
seem to have more attachment to the cause of the 
French than to that of truth, that the barbarities 
committed in that country, have been by the hands 
of foreigners. Such a story is impossible, and even 
ridiculous ; but, however, it has induced me to 
insert here a list of the barbarous wretches who 
were so long the scourge of the city of Nantz, 
from which it will appear, that they were all 
Frenchmen, born and bred. This is an act of jus- 
tice due to other nations. 

Member of the Convention on mission at Nantz. 

Carrier, horn in Gascony, 
Members of the Revolutionary Committee at 

Nantz, 

Goullin, 

Chaux, 

Grand-Maison, 

Bachelier, 

Perrochaux, 

Mainguet, 

Naud, 

Gallen, 

Durassier, 

d2 



> horn at Nantz, 



42 

Leveque, horn at Mayenne. 
Bolognie, horn at Paris, 
Bataille, horn at Charite-sur- Loire. 
Joly, born at Angerville-la-Martel. 
Pinard, horn at Christophe-Duhois, 

Carrier was the great mover, the assassin-ge- 
neral ; the committee were his agents. Some of 
them were always assembled in their hall, to give 
directions to the under murderers, while the others 
took repose, or were dispat( hed on important ex- 
peditions, such as the shooting or drowning of 
hundreds at a time. They stood in need, how- 
ever, of subaltern cut-throats, more determined 
and bloody than the people in general ; and there- 
fore they raised a company, who took the title of 
the company of Marat, composed of the vilest 
wretches that were to be found. These being 
assembled together, took the following oath be- 
fore their employers. 

Vol. IV. Page 203. 

T swear to pursue unto death, all royalists^ fa- 
natics (Christians*) gentlemen (the French word 
is muscadim, which means a gentleman, or well- 
dressed man) and moderates (moderate people) 
under whatever colour, mask, or form, they may 
appear. 

* Fanatic is the name now given to all who remain attached 

to the Christian Religion. 



48 

1 swear, to spare neither parents nor relations; 
to sacrifice my personal interests, and even friend- 
ship itself; and to acknowledge for parents, bro- 
thers and friends, nobody but the patriots, the ar- 
dent defenders of the republic. 



Pity with me, reader, the poor unhappy people 
that were become the prey of a set of blood- 
hounds like these. Pity the aged parents and the 
helpless babes, that were to bleed beneath their 
merciless sabres. If you are not endowed with 
uncommon fortitude, I could almost advise you to 
advance no further : fifty times has the pen drop- 
ped from my trembling hand : Oh ! how I pity 
the historian that is to hand these bloody deeds 
down to our shuddering and indignant posterity ! 



Vol L Page 66. 

Tronjolly, a witness, informs the tribunal, that 
the company of Marat was at first composed of 
sixty persons ; that Goullin openly proposed that 
none but the most infamous villains should be ad- 
mitted into it ; and, at each nomination, cried out, 

Is there no greater scoundrel to be found ?" 



a 



On the 24th of October, says the witness, I 
heard Goullin and his colleagues say, that they 
were going to give a great example ; that the pri- 
soners should be all shot. I attest that this scene 



44 

was still more horrible than that of the 22nd and 
23rd of September. The company of Marat were 
carousing round a table, and at the same time it 
was deliberated whether the prisoners should not 
be massacred by hundreds. In this deliberation, 
Goullin was for indiscriminate death : and thus 
were the prisoners, without ever being interroga- 
ted, or heard, condemned to die. There existed 
no proofs of guilt against these unfortunate pri- 
soners ; they were what were called suspected 
'persons ; the felons, and all real criminals were 
set at liberty., 

Carrier, in quality of member of the Conven- 
tion, had placed a vile wretch at Pain-boeuf, 
named Foucault, to whom he gave an absolute 
power of life and death. 



Vol L Page 68. 

Old men, women with child, and children, were 
drowned, no distinction. They were put on board 
of lighters, which were railed round to keep the 
prisoners from jumping over-board if they should 
happen to disengage themselves. There were 
plugs made in the bottom, or sides, which, being 
pulled out, the lighter sunk, and all in it w^ere 
drowned. These expeditions were first carried 
on by night, but the sun soon beheld the murder- 
ous work. At first the prisoners were drowned 
in their clothes ; this, however, appeared too mer- 



45 

ciful ; to expose the two sexes naked before each 
other was a pleasure that the ruffians could not 
forego. 

I must now, says the witness, speak of a new 
sort of cruelty. The young men and women were 
picked out from among the mass of sufferers, 
stripped naked, and tied together face to face. 
After being kept in this situation about an hour, 
they were put into an open lighter ; and, after 
receiving several blows on the skull with the but 
of a musket, thrown into the water. These were 
called republican marriages. - 



Vol, L Page 72. 

On the 26th of October, Carrier, the member 
of the Convention, ordered me (the witness was 
a judge of some sort) to guillotine indiscriminate- 
ly all the Vendeans who came to give themselves 
up. I refused ; but the representative of the peo- 
ple promised that his prey should not escape him 
thus. In short, on the 29th, he had guillotined 
twenty-seven Vendeans, among whom were chil- 
dren of thirteen, fourteen and fifteen years of age, 
and seven young women, the oldest of which was 
not above twenty-nine. On the same day twenty 
other persons were executed without trial. 



46 



Vol IK Page 76. 

Carrier, the bloodiest of the bloody, harangued 
his agents sword in hand ; he ordered a woman 
to be shot at her window, merely because she 
looked at him ; he chose, from among the female 
prisoners those whom he thought worthy of his 
foul embraces ; and, after being satiated with 
their charms, sent them to the guillotine. 

Observe well, reader, that this was a member 
of the National Convention^ a representative of 
the people^ a law-giver. 



Vol IV. Page 155. 

I think it necessary to bring in here a deposi- 
tion or two from the third and fourth volumes of 
the trial, as they will show at once the pretended 
and real motives of the member of the Convention 
and his committee. 

Jomard, a witness, declares that when the ge- 
neral was beat at Nantz, and the seizure of sus- 
pected persons began, nobody believed any thing 
of a conspiration against the republic. As a clear 
proof of this, adds Jomard^ Richard, one of- the 
agents of the revolutionary committee, wrote to 
Jiis friend Crespin, telling him that he had left the 
company of Marat without arms ; but that means 



47 

were found out to arm the patriots and disarm the 
suspected. The general, adds Richard, is now 
beating ; but do not frighten yourself : / will tell 
you the reason of this at your return. 



Vol IIL Page 58. 

Latour, a witness, says, I was sick ; Dulny, 
who was my doctor, informed me that Goudet, 
public accuser, had let him into an important se- 
cret ; which was, that Carrier and the revolution- 
ary committee not knowing how to squeeze the 
rich, had fell upon a plan to imprison them, while 
they seized on their effects. In order to have a 
pretext for doing this, said Goudet, we ^hall give 
out, that there exists a conspiration against the 
republic. I am to make the general beat early in 
the morning. The sans-culottes,* informed be- 
forehand, are to parade at their different posts ; 
the rich, and the timid will, according to custom, 
remain in their houses ; to these houses the sans- 
culottes are to repair, pillage all they have, and 
convey them to prison. 

Notwithstanding my illness, I had no inclina- 
tion to be found at home ; I therefore begged the 
doctor to give me notice when the affair was to 

* This degrading terra which is become the glory of modern 
patriots, hterally means, men tvithout breeches ; but it was ever 
used by the French to designate vile, rascally people, the dregs 
of society 3 and as such we ought now to understand it. 



take place, which he promised to do. In three 
days after he informed me that the general would 
beat the next morning. In spite of my sickness 
I went to my post. We were all the day under 
arms, and a great number of rich people were 
pillaged and imprisoned, some guillotined. 

I attest, adds the witness, that there was not 
the least appearance of any conspiration. All was 
a dead calm ; terror and consternation alone 
reigned in the city. More than three thousand 
victims to lust and avarice were this day lodged 
in loathsome dungeons, from whence they were 
never to be released but to be led to slaughter. 

I shall now insert an article or two that will 
give the reader an idea of the manner of proceed- 
ing of these sans-culottes. 



Vol IV. Page 157. 

One of the members of the revolutionary com- 
mittee, with a company of armed ruffians, went 
to the house of one Careil. They first examined 
all the papers, took 5000 livres in paper money, 
and 12 louis d'ors. They returned again in the 
evening, says the witness, who it seems was mis- 
tress of the house ; we, at first took them for 
common thieves, and therefore our alarm ivas not 
so great ; but, to our sorrow, we were soon con- 
vinced by the voice of Pinard, that they were the 



49 

patriots of the revolutionary committee. Our fa- 
mily was composed of women and one old man. 
There was myself; four sisters-in-law, formerly 
nuns ; two old relations above eighty years of 
age, and my husband. The house and yard were 
stripped of every thing, and the ruffians were 
talking of setting fire to the buildings. One of 
my sisters had made shift to preserve 800 livres ^ 
she offered them these to save the house ; they 
accept the conditions, receive the money, and 
then burn the house to the ground. 

Our persons were now all that remained to be 
disposed of. There was a one-horse chair ; but 
which was too good for any of us ; it was fas- 
tened to the tail of a cart into which we were put 
(my husband, an old and infirm man being obliged 
to walk in the rear) and thus we were dragged, 
preceded by our plundered property, to that gang 
of cut-throats, called the revolutionary committee. 
Here our complaints were in a moment stifled. 
Pinard said, that his orders were to burn all, and 
kill all. The committee were astonished and of- 
fended at his clemency, and reprimanded him se- 
verely for not having murdered 4is according to 
his orders. 

I, my sisters, and our poor old relations were 
sent to one prison, and my husband to another. 
My husband died, and we are only left alive to 
W€ep and starve. 

E 



50 



It is well worth the reader's while to hear what 
this Pinard said in his defence, on this head. 



Vol IV. Page 162. 

We acted, says he, by the order of the Repre- 
sentative of the People, Carrier. When I went, 
at my return, to carry him the church-plate that 
I had taken from the nuns, he would insist upon 
my drinking out of the chalice (or sacramental 
cup) and asked me why I had not killed all the 
damned bitches. 

I shall here observe, once for all, that these 
volumes contain a series of robberies of this sort. 
Sometimes the plunder was divided among the 
plunderers, sometimes it was delivered to Carrier, 
and at others it was deposited with the revoluti- 
onary committee. These latter imposed immense 
taxes, or rather contributions, on the people under 
pretence of assisting the sans-culottes, but which 
were applied to their own uses. It is just to ob- 
serve also, that the tribunal at Paris, before which 
they were brought to answer for their crimes, ap- 
pears to have shown much more anxiety about 
the gold and silver, than about the lives of the 
murdered persons. 



51 



Vol F. Page 15. 



Mariotte, a witness, informs the tribunal that 
he was detached on a party seven miles distant 
from Nantz. The party, says the witness, went 
into the neighbourhood of the forest of Prince, 
and took up their quarters in a house occupied by 
Mrs. Chauvette. Five days after our arrival, 
came Pinard, about midnight, and told us that we 
were in the house of an aristocrat. He bragged 
of having that evening killed six women, and said 
that Chauvette should make the seventh. He 
threatened her, and, to add to her torment, told 
her to comfort herself, for that her child should 
die first. It is Pinard, adds he, that now speaks 
to you ; Pinard, that carries on the war against 
the female sex. I drew my sword, continues the 
witness, and told Pinard that he should pass over 
my dead body to come at the woman. 

Commerais, w ho was another of this party, in- 
forms the tribunal, that Pinard being thus stopped, 
Aubinet, one of his companions said, stand aside 
while I cut open the guts of that bitch. He did 
not succeed, however, adds this witness. 

Now Marieuil came up, and sWore he would 
have her life ; but finding us in hi^ way, he said, 
you look like a good b — ger enough ; I have a 
word to say in your ear. — We only want, says he, 
to know where she has hidden 60,000 livres be- 



52 

longing to a gentleman in the neighbourhood, f 
answered, give me your word not to hurt the wo- 
man nor her child, and I will bring her forth. He 
promised, and I brought them out. The woman, 
seeing that she was conducted to a sort of cellar, 
cried out, I know I am brought here to be mur- 
dered, like the women whose throats were cut in 
this place yesterday. All the favour I ask, said 
she, is that you will kill me before you kill my 
child. She was now questioned about the money ; 
but she continued her protestations of knowing 
nothing of it. Pinard and Aubinet prepared again 
to assassinate her ; but they did not succeed for 
this time. 



Vol V. Page 16. 

The same witness relates another adventure. 
When we were going hence, says he, towards the 
forest of Prince, we heard a man, in a little wood, 
crying for help. We found Pinard, and two other 
horsemen, each having a piece of linen under his 
arm. We left them, and soon after saw two poor 
peasants running away. In going along among 
the brushwood, says the witness, I heard some- 
thing rustle almost under my feet : I knocked the 
bushes aside with my musket ; what should it be 
but two children. I gave one of them who was 
seven years old into the care of Cedre, and kept 
the other, of l^ve years old, myself. They both 
cried bitterly. Their cries brous^ht to us two wo- 



53 

men, their mothers, who were also hid among the 
bushes ; they threw themselves upon their knees, 
and besought us not to kill their children. In 
quitting the wood Pinard came up with us, he 
had several women, whom I saw him chop down, 
and murder with his sabre. What, says he to 
me, are you going to do with those two children? 
stand away, says he, till I blow out their brains. 
I opposed him, and while we were in dispute, 
two volunteers brought an old man, stone-blind. 
This we now found was the grandfather of the 
children. Pray, said the poor old man, take my 
life, and preserve my little darlings. I told him 
that we would take care of them : he wept and 
squeezed my hand. This unfortunate old man, 
adds the witness, was murdered as well as the 
women. 

Pinard quitted the high road in returning, for 
no other purpose but that of murdering. He and 
his companions killed all they came at, men, wo- 
men and children of all ages. To justify his bar- 
barity, he produced the decree that ordered him 
to spare neither sex or age. 

In this relation of Commerais there is such au 
air of carelessness, that one is ready to believe 
that he is giving an account of a hunt. He tells 
us about their finding a couple of children in the 
bushes, and about their mothers appearing upon 
hearing their cries, with as little concern as if he 

e2 



54 

were talkiirg of foxes or beavers. So hard-heart- 
ed do men become by a familiarity with cruelty. 



My reader will recollect, that the National 
Convention of France had abolished negro-slave- 
ry ; and he will also recollect, that the humanity 
of this measure has been much applauded by those 
who have not penetration enough to see their mo- 
tive in so doing. 

We shall now see what advantage this liberty 
procured to the unfortunate country people round 
Nantz. This city, from its commercial relations 
with the West-India islands, always contained a 
number of blacks who came to wait on their mas- 
ters, &c. As soon as the decree abolishing negro 
slavery appeared, these people claimed their rights 
as citizens ; and, having no employment, they were 
taken into the service of the republic, and placed 
under the order of the revolutionary committee. 
A party of these citizens were sent to assist in 
the murders round the city, and we shall see that 
they were by no means wanting in obedience to 
xheir employers. 



Vol V. Page 90. 

An officer, named Ormes came, says a witness, 
to ask our assistance in favour of fi\e pretty wo- 
men, whom the company of Americans (this was. 



56 

1; 

the word which had taken place of that of negroes f 
because the Convention had forbidden any one to 
call them negroes) had reserved for a purpose 
easily to be guessed at. A party marched off, 
and soon came to the house where the blacks had 
lodged the women. The poor creatures were cry- 
ing and groaning ; their shrieks were to be heard 
at half a mile. The party ordered the door to 
be opened, which was at last done. They then 
demanded the women ; no, replied the blacks, 
they are now our slaves ; we have earned them 
dear enough, and you shall tear them away limb 
by limb, if you have them. We told these men, 
that, thanks to the salutary decrees of the Con- 
vention, the French empire contained 7io slaves. 
The brutality of the blacks would not permit them 
to listen to the voice of reason ; they prepared for 
the defence of their prey, when the party, always 
guided by prudence, preferred retiring, to avoid 
slaughter. 

Two days after, continues the witness, the 
Americans, satiated with their captives, left them. 
One of these women, the handsomest in the eyes 
of the blacks, had been obliged to endure the ap- 
proaches of more than a hundred of them. She 
was fallen into a kind of stupor, and was unable 
to walk or to stand. The whole live were shot 
soon after. 

1 do not know which is most entitled to our 
detestation here, the brutal negroes, or the pusil- 



66 

lanimous rascally Frenchmen, who were the wit- 
nesses of their horrid deeds. Prudence taught 
these poltroons to retire, when they saw five of 
their lovely country-women exposed to the nause* 
ous embraces of a set of filthy merciless mon- 
sters ! they saw them bathed in tears, heard their 
supplicating cries, were shocked at a sight the 
very idea of which rouses all the feelings of man- 
hood ; but prudence taught them to retire !— Sa- 
vage villains ! prudence never taught you to re- 
tire from the burnings and shootings of poor 
defenceless innocent priests, and women and 
children ! It was not till the blacks prepared to 
defend their prey that prudence taught you to re- 
tire ! Such are the French, they who pretend to 
adore the fair sex. 



Some of the women, taken in the country, 
were suffered to die, or rather to be murdered, in 
a less shocking way. 

Vol V. Page 35. 

Nantz, 5th Ventose, second year of the French Re- 
public, 

Citizen Male is hereby ordered to conduct the 
forty women, under his care, to the top of the 
cliff Pierre-Moine, and there hurl them head fore- 
most into the sea. 

(Signed) Foucault. 



57 

We now come to the deposition of George 
Thomas^ a health officer, who is one among the 
few, even of the witnesses, that appears to have 
preserved some remains of humanity. He tells 
such a tale of wo as I hope, and am persuaded, 
the reader's heart will with difficulty support. 



Vol IL Page 14T. 

The revolutionary hospital, says the witness, 
was totally unprovided with every necessary. The 
jail-fever made terrible ravages in all the houses 
of detention ; seventy five persons, or thereabout, 
died daily in this hospital. There were nothing 
but rotten matrasses, on each of which more than 
fifty prisoners had breathed their last. 

I went to Chaux, one of the committee, to ask 
for relief for the unhappy wretches that remained 
here. We cannot do any thing, said Chaux ; but, 
if you will, you may contribute to the cause of 
humanity by a way that I will point out to you. 
That rascal Philippe has 200,000 livres in his 
clutches which we cannot come at. Now, if you 
will accuse him in form, and support your accu- 
sation by witnesses that I will engage to furnish 
you with, I will grant you, out of the sum, all 
that you want for the revolutionary hospital. At 
the very mention of humanity from Chaux I was 
astonished : the latter part of his proposal, how- 



58 

ever, brought me back to my man. I rejected it 
with the indignation that it merited. 

I attest, that the revolutionary committee of 
Nantz seized and imprisoned ahuost all those w^ho 
were esteemed rich, men of talents, virtue and 
humanity. 

I accuse this committee of having ordered, to 
my knowledge, the shooting or drowning of be- 
tween four and five hundred children, the oldest 
of which were not more than fourteen years of 
age. 

Minguet, one of the committee, had given me 
an order to choose two from among the children, 
whom I intended to save from death and bring 
up. I chose one of eleven years old, and another 
of fourteen. The next day I went to the prison, 
called the Entrepot, with several of my friends, 
whom I had prevailed on to ask for some of these 
children. When we came, we found the poor 
little creatures stood no longer in need of our in- 
terposition. They were all drowned. I attest, 
that I saw in this prison, but the evening before, 
more than four hundred. 

Having received an order from the military 
commissioners to go to the Entrepot, to certify as 
to the pregnancy of a great number of women, I 
found, in entering this horrible slaughter-house, a 
great quantity of dead bodies, thrown here and. 



69 

there. I saw several infants, some yet palpitatingjf 
and others drowned in tubs of human excrement. 
I hurried along through this scene of horror. My 
aspect frightened the women : they had been ac- 
customed to see none but their butchers. I en- 
couraged them ; spoke to them the language of 
humanity. I found that thirty of them were with 
child ; several of them seven or eight months. 
Some few days after I went again to see these 
unhappy creatures, whose situation rendered them 
objects of compassion and tenderness ; but — (adds 
the witness with a faultering voice) shall I tell 
you, they had been most inhumanly murdered. 

The further I advanced, continues the witness, 
the more was my heart appalled. There were 
eight hundred women and as many children con- 
fined in the Entrepot and in the Mariliere, There 
were neither beds, straw, nor necessary vessels. 
The prisoners were in want of every thing. Doc- 
tor Rollin and myself saw fiYe children expire in 
less than four minutes. They received no kind 
of nourishment. — We asked the women in the 
neighbourhood, if they could not lend them some 
assistance. What would you have us do ? said 
they, Grand-Maison arrests every one that at- 
tempts to succour them. 



Vol IL Page 156. 
The same witness says, I accuse the commit- 



60 

tee in general of the murder of seven prisoners, 
whom, for the want of time to examine them, 
they had hewn down with sabres under the win- 
dow of their hall. 

The witness adds. Carrier and the committee, 
as well as their under-murderers, used to turn the 
drownings into jests : they called them immer- 
sions^ national baptisms, vertical transportations^ 
bathings, ^c. I entered, says he, one day a pub- 
lic house opposite the Bouffay, where I saw a 
water-man, named Perdreau. He asked me for 
a pinch of snuff: for, says the ruffian, I have 
richly earned it; I have just helped to dispatch 
seven or eight hundred. How, says I, do you 
manage to make away with them so fast. Nothing 
so easy, replied he ; when I have a bathing match, 
I strip them naked, two men with their bayonets 
push them tied two and two into my boat, whence 
they go souse into the water, with a broken skull. 



Vol IL Page 151. 

Vaujois, a witness, says, I wrote ten times to 
the administrators of the district, and went often 
to the revolutionary committee to request, that 
something should be done for the poor children 
in prison ; but could obtain nothing. At last I 
ventured to speak to Carrier, who replied, in a 
passion ; You are a counter-revolutionist : no pity : 
they are young vipers, that must be destroyed. — 



61 

If I had acted of myself, says the witness, I should 
have shared their fate. 

One day in entering the Entrepot^ a citizen of 
Nantz saw a great heap of corpses : they were 
all of children : many were still palpitating and 
struggling with death. The man looked at them 
for some time, saw a child move its arm, he seiz- 
ed it, ran home with it, and had the good luck to 
save it from death and its more terrible ministers. 

Here Thomas is again questioned, and he at- 
tests, that the revolutionary committee issued an 
order, commanding all those who had taken chil- 
dren from the prisons, to carry them back again; 
and this, adds the witness, for the pure pleasure 
of having them murdered. 



Vol IV, Page 245. 

Cossirant, a witness, deposes, that it was pro- 
posed to shoot some of the prisoners en masse ;* 
but that the proposal was rejected. However, 
says he, as I was returning home one evening, I 
met Ramor, who told me that the shooting was 
at that moment going on. As I heard no noise I 
could not believe him ; but I was not suffered to 

* The French expression is preserved here. It is to be 
hoped that it will never be adopted in the language of any other 
couijtry. Its meaning is, in multitudes^ 

F 



62 

remain long in doubt. A fellow came up to me 
covered with blood : that is the way we knock 
them off, my boy, says he. Seven hundred had 
been shot that afternoon. 



Vol IV, Page 256. 

Debourges, a witness, says, I have seen, du- 
ring six days, nothing but drownings, guillotinings 
and shootings. Being once on guard, I command- 
ed a detachment that conducted the fourth masse 
of women to be shot at Gigan. When I arrived, 
I found the dead bodies of seventy-five women 
already stretched on the spot. They were quite 
naked. I was informed that they were girls from 
fifteen to eighteen years of age. When they had 
the misfortune not to fall dead after the shot, they 
were dispatched with sabres. 



Vol IL Page 244. 

Naud, one of the accused, says, I saw a red- 
headed general, named Hector, at the head of a 
detachment conducting prisoners to the meadow 
of the Mauves. Castrie and I followed him. 
When we came they were preparing to fire ; but 
we made shift to save a few of the children. 



63 



Fol I. Page 27. 

Labenette, a witness, informs the tribunal, that 
the rev^olutionary committee ordered to be Stuck 
on all the walls of the city, a decree forbidding 
all fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, 
relations, or friends, to solicit the pardon of any 
prisoner whatever. 

I was also witness of the drowning of ninety 
priests, two of whom, who were decrepid old 
men, by some accident or other escaped ; but 
were retaken and murdered. Indeed, adds this 
witness, I have been an eye witness of several 
drownings of men, women with child, girls, boys, 
infants, indiscriminately. I have also seen of all 
these descriptions shot in the public square, and 
at other places. The national guard of the city 
was employed during six weeks in filling up the 
ditches, into which the massacred persons were 
thrown. I was doctor to one of the prisons, and 
was like to be displaced, because I was too hu- 
mane. 



Vol L Page 60. 

Carrier sent for the president of the military 
commission. It is you then, says he, Mr. son of 
a bitch, that has dared to give orders contrary to 
mine. Mind ; if you have not emptied the En- 



64 

irepot in two hours, I will have your head, and 
the heads of all the commission. — It is not neces- 
sary to add, that he was obeyed. 



Vol L Page 103. 

TronjoUy, a witness, says, that Chaux express- 
<id his disapprobation of the law of the 14th of 
September. It is a great pity, said he, it ever 
was made ; without that, we would have reduced 
the inhabitants of Nantz to a handful. — Carrier 
was consulted, adds this witness, with respect to 
receiving money to save the lives of the rich ; but 
the merciful Representative of the people answer- 
ed ; no compositions : the guillotine ; the guillo- 
tine; and take their money afterwards. — Three 
women, too charming certainly, since they at- 
tracted the desires of the ferocious Carrier, had 
the misfortune to be chosen for the tyger's plea- 
sures. He first sacrificed them to his brutal lust, 
and then sent them to augment the masse of a 
massacre. 



Vol 11. Page 175. 

The widow Dumey, a witness says, that she 
is the widow of the late keeper of the Entrepot ; 
that she saw fifty priests brought there, and rob- 
bed of all their money and effects ; and that they 
were afterwards drowned, with some women and 



65 

little children. She adds, twenty-four men and 
four women were taken out one d^y, A child of 
fourteen years was tied with others to be drown- 
ed, his cries for his papa were enough to pierce 
the heart of a tiger; Lambertye, tied him, how- 
ever, and drowned him with the rest. 

Fouquet, the companion of Lambertye, said on 
this occasion, that he had already helped to dis- 
patch nine thousand, and that if they would but 
let him alone for twenty-four hours, he would 
sweep all the prisons of Nantz. 



Vol IL Page 186. 

Lacaille^ keeper of another prison, called the 
Bouffay, gives a circumstantial account of one of 
the drownings. 

The horrid night, says the witness, of the 23d 
of October, two soldiers of the Company of Ma- 
rat came to the Bouffay, each with a bundle of 
cords. About nine o'clock they told me there 
were one hundred and fifty-five prisoners, whom 
they were to transfer to Belle-Isle, to work at a 
fortress. About an hour after, arrived thirty or 
forty more of these soldiers. An order from the 
committee was produced for one hundred and 
fifty-five of my prisoners. I observed to them, 
that several of the prisoners on the list were now 
at liberty or in the hospitals. 

f2 



66 

They now sat down to table, and after having 
supped, and drunk heartily, they brought out 
their cords, and diverted themselves a while in 
tying each other, as they intended to tie the pri- 
soners. 1 then conducted them to the rooms where 
the prisoners were lodged. They instantly fell to 
work tying the poor trembling wretches two and 
two. 

Grand-Maison now entered the court yard, and 
hollowed out to them to dispatch. Goullin came 
stamping and swearing, because the number on 
the list could not be completed. There were so 
many sick and dead that they could not well be 
luade up. I sent you fifteen this evening, says 
Goullin, what have you done with them ? 1 told 
him they were up stairs. Down with them, says 
he. I obeyed, and they were tied, like the rest. 
Instead of one hundred and fifty -five, Goullin at 
last consented to take one hundred and twenty- 
nine ; but this number not being complete, the 
equitable and tender-hearted Goullin ordered the 
remainder to be taken from the prisoners indis- 
tinctly ; and when this was done he marched off 
at the head of the assassins to conduct them to 
the river, where they were all drowned. 

Vol IL Page 204. 

The widow Mallet, who had first been robbed 
of her property, and then imprisoned, gives an 
account of the manner in which she and her com- 
panions in captivity were treated. 



67 

I complained, says this poor woman, to Per- 
rocheaux of a violent sore throat. That's good, 
said he, the guillotine will cure you of that. 

One day Joly asked if I was not the widow 
Mallet, and giving me a look, that makes me 
tremble even now, aye, said he, she shall drink 
cut of the great cup. 

In the house where we were confined, there 
were a great number of beautiful pictures. Some 
men were sent one day to tear them to pieces, 
which they did, leaving only one which repre- 
sented deaths and jeering wdth savage irony, con- 
template that image, said they, to cheer youF 
hearts. 

We were in want of every necessary. Seven 
hundred of us were confined in this house, which, 
even as a prison was too small for two hundred. 
Forty were crammed into one little chamber. 
During six or seven months we had no infirmary, 
or rather each apartment was one. The sick 
and dead were often extended on the floor among 
the living. How many have I seen struggling in 
the pangs of death by my side. 

Grand-Maison told me one day of an old quar- 
rel : times are altered, says he, now I have you 
under my clutches. 

Durassier came one day drunk, and began td 



68 

make out a list for execution. His oaths and im- 
precations made us tremble ; I was on the fatal 
list, and I know not how I have escaped. 

My old servant went to solicit for my removal, 
representing me as dangerously ill. Perrocheaux 
said to her : let her die, you silly bitch, and then 
we shall have her house^ and you will fare better 
with us than with her. 



Vol IL Page 215. 

Brejot, a witness, says, there were some wo- 
men going to be shot; one of them had a child 
of eleven months old at her breast, which the as- 
sassins would have shot with its mother, had not 
a soldier snatched it from her arms. The babe 
was carried by a woman to Gourlay, a surgeon, 
who had the compassion to take care of it. 

Vol IL Page 217. 

Fournies, a witness, says, that there were at 
©ne time, to his knowledge, ninety-six priests 
drowned in the Loire. Adds he, four of them got 
on board a Dutch sloop lying in the river; but 
were retaken and drowned the next day. Fou- 
cault, in boasting of the second drowning of these 
priests, showed, in a company, where I was, a 
pair of shoes he then wore, which he had taken 
from the feet of one of them. 



69 



Vol. IL Page 220. 

Ja7ie Lallies, a young woman, confined on the 
general accusation of being an aristocrat, informs 
the tribunal, that she was made cook in the pri- 
son. One night, says she, a number of the com- 
pany of Marat came to the prison. One Girar- 
deau conducted the troop. Come, my lads, says 
he, I must go and see my birds in the cage. 
Ducou, seeing some of the prisoners weep, what 
the devil do you howl for, says he, we want pro- 
visions here, and we are going to send you off to 
get us some, that is all. 

Crespin, said to me, in giving me several blows 
with his naked sword : march, bitch, light us 
along : we are masters now^ : your turn will soon 
come, when there is no better game. 

Come, come, my little singing birds, said Joly ; 
out of your nests, and make up your packets, and 
above all do not forget your pocket-books ; that 
is the main point ; no cheating the nation. Ducou 
said aside to Durassier ; are not they finely bit ? 
Finding they did not prepare themselves quick 
enough, he adds ; come, come, time to dress them, 
time to shoot them, time to knock their brains out, 
I think that is plenty of time for them. 

Durassier kept bawling out, quick, b— gers, 
march. To a sick man, who walked with a stick. 



70 

he said : you want no stick ; march like the rest, 
b — ger ; you shall soon have a stick, with the 
devil to you. 

Ducou, as he went away, said to the keeper, 
good-bye for this time ; we shall come again soon 
to ease you of the rest : I think we have a pretty 
smart haul for once. — These poor souls were all 
drowned. 



Vol IL Page 222. 

Mrs, Pichot, living by the water side at Nantz, 
says, that she saw the carpenters busy construct- 
ing the lighters for drowning the prisoners ; and 
soon after, says the witness, I saw, brought to be 
drowned at the Crepuscule, a great number of 
women, many of whom had sucking children in 
their arms. They screamed and cried most pite- 
ously. Oh ! said they, must we be put to death 
without being heard ! 

Several poor women of the neighbourhood ran 
and took a child a piece, and some two, from 
them. Upon this the poor creatures shrieked and 
tore their hair worse than before. — Oh ! my dear, 
my love, my darling babe ! am I never to see your 
dear face again ! Heavens protect my poor dear 
little love ! — Such heart-piercing cries were sure- 
ly never before heard ! yet these could not soften 
the hell hounds that conducted them. 



71 

Many of these women were far advanced with 
child. All were taken into the boats ; a part were 
immediately dispatched, and the rest put on board 
the Dutch sloop, till the next day. 

When the next day arrived, says the witness, 
though we were all terror-struck, many had the 
courage to ask for a child a piece of those that 
were left alive ; but the hard-hearted villain, Fou- 
quet, refused, pretending his orders were chang- 
ed, and all that remained on board the sloop were 
drowned. 



Vol IL Page 223, 

The same witness says, one day I saw seve- 
ral prisoners, brought from the Entrepot, deposi- 
ted in a lighter with a deck. They were fasten- 
ed under hatches, where they were left for forty- 
eight hours. When the hatches were opened, 
there were sixty of them stifled. Other prisoners 
that were now on board, were obliged to take out 
the bodies. Robin stood on the deck with his 
drawn sword in his hand, and superintended the 
work. This done, all the prisoners on board 
were stripped naked, men, women and children, 
of all ages, from four-score to five ; their hands 
were tied behind them, and they were thrown into 
the river. 



T2 

Here the judge, if we ought to call a sans-cu- 
lotte ruffian a judge, asked the witness if this 
drowning was performed by day, or by night. 
By open day, answers the witness. She adds, I 
observed that the drowners became very familiar 
with the prettiest of the women ; and some few 
of them were saved, if it can be called saving, to 
endure the more than infernal embraces of these 
monsters. 



Vol IL Page 227. 

Delamarre, informs the tribunal, that there was 
a heap formed of the bodies of the women, who 
had been shot, and that the soldiers, laughing, cal- 
led this horrible spectacle the mountain, alluding 
to the mountain of the National Convention. 



Vol IL Page 231. 

Foucault having said one day to Bachelier, 
that he had two cargoes to dispatch that night, 
Bachelier flings his arms round his neck, saying, 
you are a brave fellow, the best revolutionist I 
know among them all. 

This same Foucault fired at his father with a 
pistol ; and was looked upon as the inventor of 
the plugged lighters for drowning the prisoners. 



7 



o 



Delassal, who appears to have been an officer 
of police, tells the tribunal, that one day, he had 
taken up a woman of bad fame, who lived with 
Lambertye, one of the chief drowners. He 
came to my house, says the witness, in a rage, 
abused my wife, and casting a ferocious look at 
my children : poor little b — gers, says he, I pity 
you ; to-morrow you will be fatherless. 

Vol IL Page 252. 

Coron, one of the company of Marat, informs 
the tribunal, that he had seen seven thousand five 
hundred persons shot at the Gigan, and four 
thousand he had assisted to drown. 

Vol. 11. Page 254. 

Sophy Bretonville, a witness, attests, that Per- 
rocheaux came several times to her father's, under 
pretence of speaking to her mother about the re- 
lease of her husband ; but that his real business 
was to make indecent offers to herself. In short, 
says the witness, he made me an offer to release 
my father, if I would satisfy his lustful desires ; 
but, as I refused, very well, said he at last, I shall 
go and do his business for him in an instant. 

Vol. IL Page 258. 

A house was wanted for some purpose by the 
committee. Chaux was told that there was one 

G 



74 

in the neighbourhood ; but that it was occupied 
by the owner. A pretty story, says he ; in with 
the b — ger into prison, and he will be glad to 
purchase his life at the expense of his house. 

When the horrible situation of the prisoners 
was represented to the committee, Goullin and 
Chaux replied : so much the better ; let them 
die ; it will be so much clear gain to the nation. 



Vol IL Page 284. 

Jane Lavigne, informs the tribunal, that, one 
night, Carrier came with Phillippe to sup at her 
house. They were talking, says the witness, of 
the measures to be pursued. You are a parcel of 
whining b — gers of judges, said Carrier : you 
Want proofs to guillotine a man ; into the river 
with the b— gers, says the Representative of the 
people, into the river with them ; that is the 
shortest way. 



Vol III. Page IS. 

Mary Hemu, informs the tribunal, that she got 
admittance one day into a prison where there 
were a great many women confined, several hun- 
dreds. I saw one amongst them, adds the wit- 
ness, that was taking in labour ; she was, how- 
ever, standing up. Such an object I never saw ; 
she was crawling with vermin ; her lips were 






blue ; death had akeady seized her,— To bear the 
smell, in this infected abode, I was obliged to 
have the smelling-bottle continually at my nose. 

In consequence of the permission granted me 
to choose a child out of this prison, I went to a 
room where there were three hundred, or there 
abouts, all of whom appeared dying or dead. I 
stopped at the door (for the stink was such that I 
durst advance no further) and called the children 
to me. Some of the little innocents raised their 
hands, and others their heads ; but only six were 
able to get to me. I took one of them, and was 
also allowed to take a poor w^oman, whose situa- 
tion and piteous moans moved me to the soul. I 
gave them an asylum at my house, till the issuing 
of the inhuman decree, which obliged me to re- 
turn them into the clutches of the tigers. When 
this decree came out, I applied to the wife of 
Gallon, one of the committee, begging her to 
intercede with her husband for the preservation 
of the woman and child I had taken : I will do 
no such thing, said she : and, if you will be ad- 
vised by a friend, you will not trouble your head 
about them. — They w^ere re-imprisoned, and I 
never heard of them more. 



Vol IIL Page 14. 

Mrs. LaiUet informs the tribunal, that six 
young ladies, of the name of Lameterye, were 
sent to the Bouffay. Carrier, says she, sent an 



T6 

order to put them instantly to death. The keep- 
er of the prison commissioned me to communi- 
cate to them the fatal tidings. I called them into 
a room apart, and told them that the Representa- 
tive of the people had ordered their execution. 

. The youngest of them gave me this ring (here 
she showed the ring ;) they threw themselves on 
their knees, and called on the name of Jesus 
Christ. From this posture the ruffians roused 
them to conduct them to the place of death. 
They were executed, without ever being tried. 
While they were dispatching, twenty-seven men 
awaited the fatal stroke at the foot of the Guillo- 
tine. 

It is said, to the honour of the executioner, that 
his remorse for having executed these young ladies 
was so great, that he died in a few days after- 
wards. 

I attest, adds this witness, that I have seen 
numbers of naked bodies of women, lying by the 
side of the Loire, thrown up by the tide. I have 
seen heaps of human bodies, gnawed, and partly 
devoured by the dogs and birds of prey ; which 
latter were continually hovering over the city, 
and particularly near the water side. I have 
seen numbers of carcasses in the bottoms of the 
lighters, partly covered with water. 

VoL III, Page 23. 

Renaudot informs the tribunal, that he saw a 
number of men conducted to the meadow, called 



77 

the Mauves, and shot. Some of them who were 
not killed by the fusils, says the witness, were 
dispatched with the sabre. A cannoneer, named 
Jacob, came up to me, and said that it was he 
who had finished those who escaped the balls. 
Their necks, says this butcher, were just the 
tiling to try my new sabre. 



Vol, III, Page 24. 

T accuse, says the same witness, the committee 
of the murder of three nuns, with my children's 
maid. They were conducted by Joly to the 
committee to take the oath of apostacy. Shoot 
no more, drown no more, said the nuns, and we 
will even take this horrid oath. This amounted 
to a refusal, and the consequence is too well 
known. 



Vol III. Page 25. 

Captain Leroux attests, that the murder of the 
ninety priests was a most w anton act of cruelty, 
contrary to the professions of the committee it- 
self; for that they were only to be sent, it was 
said, into perpetual exile. He says he was order- 
ed before the committee, and threatened with im- 
prisonment for having permitted two of them to 
get on board his vessel. 

Captain Boulei, one day, in weighing his 

g2 



78 

anchor, saw four or ^ve hundred dead bodies 
raised up by the cables ; and adds, that there 
were one hundred and thirty women confined at 
Mirabeau, who disappeared all at once. 

Vol HI. Page 27. 

Foucault, one of the accused, being asked by 
the judge, what was become of the pillage of the 
priests (for, as I have already observed, this 
seemed to be the chief object of the trial.) Foii- 
cault replied, that having consulted Carrier on 
the subject, he answered, b — ger ! who should 
have it but those that did the work ? — Foucault 
declares that the effects of the priests were 
lodged on board the covered lighter, whence the 
priests had been precipitated into the water ; and 
on board of which Lambertye, the chief in this 
expedition, gave a great dinner the next day, 
costing forty thousand livres. From other wit- 
nesses, it appears that Carrier assisted at this re- 
past, and that he even proposed dining on the 
scaffold of the guillotine. 

The following traits are well calculated to 
show, what sort of treatment a people must ever 
expect from the hands of base-born villains, when 
they are suffered to seize the reigns of power. 

Vol. IIL Page U. 

I had a son and daughter, says a witness., 
named Pusiurle ; Grand Maison had proposed a 



79 

marriage between his son and my daughter, and 
Goullin another between his daughter and my 
son. Neither had my consent ; and to avenge 
themselves, when they were in the committee, 
they seized my wife and daughter, and all my 
most valuable property. The former were drag- 
ged to a loathsome prison ; the latter I have 
never since seen or heard of. 

Vol. III. Page 17. 

A friend of Goullin had, as he j^retended, been 
brought to punishment by the family of the two 
young Toinettes. When they were brought be- 
fore the committee, he told them of this. But, 
said they, it could not be us. Goullin, like the 
wolf in the fable, cried out, if it was not you, it 
was your father. The two Toinettes were exe- 
cuted. 

Vol. III. Page 33. 

My son-in-law, says a witness, named Yaile, 
had been confined for no other specified crime 
than that of being a ivell dressed man (muscadin.) 
I went to Carrier and to the committee to solicit 
his release, before the order was issued forbidding 
all solicitations. There seemed to be some hopes 
of succeeding ; but Chaux opposed my request, 
and he alone. It was he who had ordered him 
to be imprisoned, to be revenged on us, because 
we refused to sell him a quantity of starch, that 
he had a mind to. 



80 



Vol IIL Page 38. 



I was at a drowning, says Tabouret, on board 
a lighter conducted by Affile. Come on, my lads, 
said he, to the island of Topsy-turvy. Before we 
got out to the sinking place, I heard the prisoners 
make the most terrible lamentations. Save us ! 
Oh ! save us ! cried they ; there is yet time ! Oh ! 
pray, pray, save us ! Some of their hands w ere 
untied, and they run them through the railing, 
crying, mercy ! mercy! it was then that I saw the 
villain, Grand-Maison, chop off their hands and 
arms with his sabre. Ten minutes after, I heard 
the carpenters, placed in the little boats, hammer- 
ing at the sides of the lighter; and, directly, dowH 
it went to the bottom. 



Vol IIL Page 40. 

Trappe, When the fifty-five priests were drown- 
ed, 1 went to Carrier to ask him what should be 
done with their money, gold and silver snuffboxes, 
rings, &:c. Leave them nothing, says he. Embark 
these b — gers, and let me hear no more of them, 
says the representative of the people. 

These priests, says the witness, had a great 
number of valuable jewels, which were all de- 
livered to Richard. Carrier, upon hearing that the 
expedition was over, seemed angry ; blast it, says 
he, I intended to reserve that job for Lambertye. 



81 

The widow Dumey corroborates the evidence 
of Trappe, and adds, after the priests were drown- 
ed, Lambertye came to me, and pointing his sabre 
to my breast, bitch, says he, you shall give me an 
account of the spoils of those priests. — I attest, 
says this witness, that Lambertye and Fouquet 
were the favourites of the representative of the 
people. 

Vol III Page 43. 

Naudiller, I was, one day, at Carrier's, with 
Lambertye and several others. Carrier, in point- 
ing to the river, said, we have already ducked two 
thousand eight hundred of them there. One of 
the strangers asked what he meant. — Yes, says 
Carrier, two thousand eight hundred, in the na- 
tional hath, 

I myself saw, says the witness, while I was at 
Nantz, which w^as not long, fi\e hundred men and 
two hundred and fifty women, all tied, conducted 
to the Loire by Lambertye and Fouquet. 



Vol in. Page 50. 

One time, says Affile, (he was one of the 
drowners) Fouquet ordered me to go to Marie, to 
bespeak the two lighters that were wanted for the 
night, and to engage some carpenters. This done, 
I went and got the cords, and the staples to fasten 
the prisoners at the bottom of the lighter. — About 



nine o'clock nearly five hundred were put on 
board. — These were pillaged and stripped in the 
lighter, and Fouquet swore, if I did not obey his 
requisitions (which were always made in the 
name of the law,) he would drown me with the 
rest. 

Four little boats, continues Affile, attended each 
lighter. When the plugs were pulled out the 
prisoners cried mercy !— -There were some on the 
half deck with their hands tied only, and these, 
when they saw the lighter sinking, cried, let us 
jump into their boats and drown them with our- 
selves. But all that attempted it were hacked 
down with sabres. 

When the expedition was completed, w^e wont 
to Thomas' hotel, where the eifects of the pri- 
soners had been carried ; hence we went to Se- 
cher's, where we divided the spoil. 

The prisoners on their trial, having denied here, 
that they had given orders for the drowning, 
several of their orders were produced, and read. 
It may not be amiss to insert two or three of 
them. They will give the reader a perfect idea 
of the murderer's style. 

In the name of the Republic, The revolution- 
ary committee authorise citizen Affile jun, to re- 
quire the number of carpenters that he may find 
necessary for the execution of the expedition he 
is charged with. This citizen is required to use 



83 

ail the dispatch in his power, and to give generous 
wages to the workmen ; provided they work with 
all the zeal and activity that the public service re- 
quires. 

(Signed) Goullin, 

Bachelier, and others. 

In the name of the Republic. The revolutionary 
committee authorise citizen Colas, to take as 
many lighters and small boats, as he shall judge 
necessary, for the execution of the business that 
the committee have entrusted to his zealous care. 

(Signed) Naud, 

BOLOGNIE, 

Goullin, and others. 

In the name of the Republic, Citizen Affile 
jun. is required to pay attention to, and see ex- 
ecuted, the order given to citizen Colas ; and all 
watermen and others are required to aid and assist 
in the public service^ and to obey the requisitions 
of citizen Affile under pain of being deGlar€d had 
citizens and suspected persons, 

(Signed) Grand-Mai son, 
Naud, and others^ 



Vol III. Page (^S. 

Bourdin, a witness, gives an account of seve- 
ral shootings. The last that I saw, adds he, wajs 



84 

of eighty women. They were first shot ; then 
stripped, and left exposed on the spot during three 
days. 

I carried a young lad off from the Entrepot, 
He was thirteen years of age. When the revo- 
lutionary committee ordered all the children, thus 
preserved, to be given up, Joly, who said he was 
the judge of all the prisoners, permitted me to 
keep this boy; but my neighbour Aignes, who 
could not obtain a like favour, gave up a lad of 
fourteen years of age, agreeably to the order of 
the committee, and the next day we saw him 
shot. 

When the shooting en masse first began the 
prisoners were suffered to retain their clothes till 
they were dead. As they were conducted to the 
place of execution, and even after they arrived on 
the spot, the old -clothes dealers were seen bargain- 
ing with the soldiers for their clothes. The poor 
unfortunate creatures had the mortification to see 
their own towns-men and women buying the 
poor remains of their fortunes on their backs; 
and, the instant they fell, the monsters rushed in, 
tearing the new-acquired property from their 
bodies, yet struggling in the pangs of death. — 
But, the revolutionary butchers found that this 
was but an unproductive sale : »he clothes being 
shot through, sunk in their value ; and this cir- 
cumstance determined them to strip the prisoners 
naked before execution. 



86 



Fol III. Page G6. 

Lambert, another witness, informs^ the tribunal^ 
that he has seen the banks of the Loire covered 
with dead bodies ; among which were several old 
men, little children of both sexes, and an infinite 
number of women, all naked. One of the wo- 
men, that he saw at one time, had an infant lock- 
ed in her arms. She had been drowned at the 
Crepuscule the day before with about two hun- 
dred more. 

Vol. III. Page 96. 

A witness deposes that she saw Lebrun, one 
of the company of Marat, jump and dance upon 
the dead body of a child. 

Vol III. Page 99. 

Lamarie. I was one morning at breakfast with 
Crucy, Leveque, and Perrocheaux, when the latter 
told me, they were just going to take a young 
girl out of prison to puj her in keeping for their 
own use. 

I was one day, says the witness, at the com- 
mittee to ask the release of some children, and 
I could not help being shocked at ther jocular 
manner in which they proceeded and talked. 
Chaux said to me here we are, you see, up to our 
eyes among dead bodies and pretty girls. 

H 



86 

The criminals being asked what they had to 
say concerning their having issued certain cruel 
decrees, answeied that they were fathers of fa- 
milies^ and that if they had disobeyed Carrier, 
they feared he might not only destroy them, but 
their wives and children also. 

Now then, let us see how these affectionate, 
tender-hearted fathers of families behaved to- 
wards the wives and children of others. 

^ Vol III, Page 67. 

As they had denied having issued the cruel or- 
ders for imprisoning the children, the following 
decrees were produced. 

The revolutionary committee orders the hene- 
mlent commissaries of the seventeenth section, as 
well as all others who have prisoners in their 
houses of detention, to deliver up to nobody any 
child whatever, except it may be to the officers of 
the ships of the Republic, and even they are to 
take none under seventeen years of age. 

(Signed) Goullin, 

and others. 

The citizen keeper of the Entrepot is ordered 
to give in a list of all those, who, in obedience to 
the order of the committee, have delivered up the 
children they had taken from the prison. 

(Signed) Chaux, 

and others* 



87 

Citizen Dumey is ordered to give in a list of 
all the persons, with the streets and numbers of 
the houses where they live, who have taken away 
any of the prisoners. He will be particular in 
the dwelling of the woman, who, in spite of the 
decrees of the committee, has had the infamy to 
take away seven young girls of fifteen or sixteen 
years of a^e. 

(Signed) Grand-Mai son, 

and others. 

When the blood-thirsty villains had thus col- 
lected all the unhappy prisoners together, they 
issued the following order. 

In the name of the revolutionary committee of 
Nantz, The commandant of the troops is re- 
quired to furnish three hundred regulars. One 
half of this detachment will march to the Bouffay, 
and, taking the prisoners thence, will conduct 
them bound, two and two, to the prison of the 
Eperonniere. The other division will go to 
Sainte-Claires, and conduct the prisoners from 
thence to the Eperonniere. Then, all these pri- 
soners, together with those confined in the prison 
of the Eperonniere, are to be taken and shot, 
ivithout distinction of age or sex, in the manner 
that the commanding officer of the detociiment 
^nay judge most convenient. 

(Signed) Grand-Mai son, 

GOULLIN, 
MiNGUET, 

and others. 



88 

In this place, it may not be amiss to let the 
reader hear what these monsters had to say in 
their defence. 

Vol III. Page 35. 

Goullin. They keep telling us of our terrific 
measures ; I maintain that we made nobody trem- 
ble but the misers, the rich, the hoarders of pro- 
visions, the fanatics, and the aristocrats ; but as 
to the true sans-culotts, they had nothing to fear. 

Bachelier (Vol. III. Page 31.) All the rich 
were suspected persons. We were obliged to 
strike, not only them who did, but them who 
could do h«rir.. However, very few natriots 
were sacrificed ; we aimed principally at the 
former nobility and clergy ; at those who hoard- 
ed up provisions, and all such as possessed great 
riches. The true and real sans-culottes were 
spared. 

Vol. III. Page 99. 

One day, says a witness, I begged Bachelier to. 
have mercy on the children. I pleaded their in- 
nocence, and represented their infancy, and the 
injustice of punishing them for the faults of their 
parents. Bachelier answered coolly, if I did not 
know you, I should take you for an aristocrat. 
You do not perceive then, that these children have 
sucked aristocratic n^iik ; that the blood that runs 



in their veins is impure, and incapable of being 
changed into republican blood ? I compare them, 
added he, to an oil-barrel, in spite of all the wash- 
ing and scrubbing you can give it, it will for ever 
retain its stink. It is j List so with these children. 
They will always retain an attachment to the 
kings and priests of their fathers. 



Vol III. .Page 104. 

Bachelier answers to this. With respect, says 
he, to the children of the aristocrats, I own that 
I said, they were hard to be made good republi- 
cans ; and that it was much to be feared, that the 
children of fanatics would one day resemble 
their parents. Renard, mayor of Nantz, who is 
known for a sound patriot and a humane man, 
said on this subject, that the cats eat the young 
rats, and that they were in the right of it ; for 
it was the only way of destroying the breed. I 
am persuaded, adds Bachelier, that no true repub- 
lican will blame me for saying and thinking like 
Renard, who was a most excellent patriot. 

There was, it seems, another reason for mur- 
dering the aristocrats ; for when the proposal 
was made for killing them en masse, Robin said 
(Vol. III. Page 85) the patriots are in want of 
bread; it is just that those scoundrels should per- 
ish, and not eat up our victuals from us. — Kermen 
opposed this ; but Robin exclaimed, none of your 
moderate propositions here. I say they are a 

h2 



90 

parcel of aristocrats that wish to overturn the 
republic, therefore let them die. 



Vol IIL Page 106. 

Crespin, one of the company of Marat, in- 
forms the tribunal, that he was at a drowning on 
board a lighter, where the prisoners were fasten- 
ed down under boards, nailed from side to side. 
They uttered, says he, the most piteous cries. 
Some of them put their hands, folded in a sup- 
plicating posture, through the openings between 
the boards ; and I saw the members of the com- 
mittee chop off those hands and fingers. One 
of them plunged his sabre down in amongst the 
prisoners, and We heard a man cry out. Oh ! the 
rascal ! he has stabbed me ! — Our ears, adds the 
witness, were now stunned with the cry of, Oh ! 
you rascally, brutal savages ! this is the mercy, 
this the humanity of republicans ! 

One day, continues this witness, we saw Car- 
rier in a coach at the foot of the guillotine, en- 
joying the spectacle, while about twenty persons 
were beheaded. — Naud was with me, who went 
up to Carrier and asked him, if he did not want 
a Marat. Yes, b— ger, says Carrier. I am your 
man then, said Naud. 

The new Marat was dispatched to call the 
judges to the representative of the people ; and 
when Philippe vent?jred to tell him that, among 



91 

those whom he had ordered to the guillotine from 
the BoufFay, there were two children of fomteen 
years of age, and two others of thirteen, Carrier 
fell in a violent passion : damned b — gers, says 
he, in what country am 1 got ? All milk-hearted 
rascals alike! 

The following traits will prove that a ferocious 
cruelty had taken possession of the hearts of the 
young as well as the old. 

Vol IIL Page 65. 

Lalloue, says Naud, offered himself as an ex- 
press to fetch back the one hundred and thirty- 
two persons that were sent off to Paris. This 
he said he would do for the pleasure of seeing 
them drowned. 

This Lalloue, continues the witness, was a 
judge, and the companion of the representative 
of the people, although but nineteen years of age. 
— He had been convicted of theft, and boasted of 
being one of the murderers of the prisoners at 
Paris, in the month of September 1792. — Ah ! 
says he one day to his companions on the bench, 
you should have seen us at Paris in the month of 
September. There you would have learned how 
to knock them off. 

Vol IIL Page 111. 

Lecocq. I saw several men and women chop- 
ped down, on board a Dutch sloop that lay iji 



92 

the river. I saw a young lad assisting to drown 
the prisoners at the last drowning ; particularly 
one whom he unmercifully seized by the leg, 
dragged to the side of the lighter, and kicked 
overboard. 



Vol III, Page 126. 

Lcdllet informs the tribunal, that she saw a 
lad of about seventeen or eighteen years of age 
hew down two prisoners, and hack them with 
his sabre at the prison of the BoufFay. They 
were afterwards, adds the witness, dragged to 
the water-side. 



Vol III, Page 111. 

. Fontbonne informs the tribunal, that, at the 
request of Delille, he went to the Entrepot to 
endeavour to save an innocent and amiable fami- 
ly of females, the youngest of whom was about 
thirteen years of age. Delille went with me. 
When we came to the prison, we were conducted 
to a horrid stinking hole under a staircase. We 
asked for a candle, and, after some time, we got 
into this sort of dungeon. Here we found the 
mother and four daughters lying close to each 
other upon some wet and filthy straw ; and round 
about them there were several dead women. The 
youngest daughter, whom alone we had obtained 
permission to take, was covered up in her mother's 



93 

gown to keep her warm.— When we told the poor 
mother our errand; no, said she, mj child shall 
stay and die with myself; we have lived, and we 
will die together.— We thought ourselves justi- 
fied, adds the witness, in using force. When the 
mother perceived our resolution, she uttered such 
dreadful lamentations as are impossible to be de- 
scribed. My child ! oh ! my dear, darling child ! 
were the last words her daughter ever heard from 
her. The child never recovered the stroke ; she 
pined away about eight months, and then died. 



Vol IIL Page 113. 

^ The same witness says, I saw a great number 
of persons conducted from the place of Equality, 
to be shot at the Mauves. There were women 
and children of all ages amongst them. My 
heart could not support this spectacle ; I ran home, 
saddled my horse, and rode to the place of exe- 
cution. When I arrived the poor creatures were 
all on their knees, and the soldiers were prepar- 
ing to fire. I rushed through them, and had the 
good fortune to save eight of the children, the 
oldest of which was twelve years of age, the 
rest were shot with their fathers and mothers. 



Vol IIL Page 114. 

Laurency informs the tribunal, that he saw at 
©ne time, three hundred men conducted to the^ 



94 

water. They were all naked, and had their hands 
tied behind them. I saw too, adds the witness, 
several women and girls murdered, on board a 
barge in the river, two of whom, aged about 
eighteen years, I saw a young lad behead with 
his sabre, while he sung the Carmagnole. 

Vol IIL PageUp, 

Soiidroc, At a great dinner, to which Lam- 
bertye, the chief murderer, invited Carrier, I wa^ 
a witness of a most scandalous scene. After 
the repast was over, and while the glass went 
round, Jiambertye entertained us with along and 
full account of a drowning he had performed the 
night before, and boasted of the manner in which 
he sabred the poor vv^retches that attempted to 
escape. All, the convives, adds the witness, 
honoured his valour with long and repeated 
bur^sts of applause.— Carrier toasted the national 
bath.-— This monster talked of nothing but deatk 
and the guillotine. 

Another witness says, (Vol. III. Page 123,) I 
saw Carrier, with his drawn sword in his hand, 
threatening to guillotine the first person, who 
should dare to show the least pity for the prison- 
ers that were conducted to execution. 

And another (Vol. II.) says: Carrier came 
one day to look at the lighters that were con- 
structing for the drownings, and turning to Fou- 
calt ? charmingly com.modious indeed ! says he. 



9^ 

Do jou hear ? added he, pay these lads well for 
their labour. 



Vol III. Page 126. 

An old man appeared at the bar. I attest, says 
he, that I was ill treated by the revolutionary 
committee, because I requested the release of a 
young girl who was entirely innocent. The com- 
mittee told me that I had no business to meddle 
with any such people. My nephew and my son- 
in-law were shot for no crime whatever ; and, adds 
the old man, I had the grief to see my own chil- 
dren dragged from my house to the fatal lighters. 
One of them who made an attempt to escape from 
the hands of his barbarous executioners, was 
caught and shot. 

I dare say the reader is ready to weep for this 
poor distressed father ; but let him reserve his 
tears for more worthy objects. This old man 
was murderer like the rest, and his own family 
had fallen into the pit he had dug for another. 
Yes, reader, this grey headed, ferocious old tiger 
who complains of the cruelties of others, ends his 
evidence by accusing Carrier, even Carrier, of ha- 
ving shown an act of mercy !— I accuse him, says 
the hoary assassin (Page 26) of being no patriot^ 
since he did not execute the wife of Temploirie? 
whom I informed against as an emigrant. 



m 



Vol IV. Page 148. 

Juget, a judge at Nantz, reads, from the regis- 
ter of his tribunal, an order of Carrier, to send 
thirty-six men, twenty women, and four children 
to be shot, without being heard or tried. This 
was accordingly done. 



Vol IV. Page 148. 

Poupon deposes, that he was witness of a 
drowning, when the Company of Marat went and 
dragged sick persons from the hospital in order to 
make up a lighter full.— -Some of these persons, 
adds the witness, could scarcely crawl along, and 
I saw these murderers beat them most cruelly with 
great sticks, crying : along with you b — gers ! 
march ! march ! we will give you sweet air 
enough now. — Others they dragged along by the 
hair of the head, till they got them on board of 
the lighter. — All this time, says the witness, the 
conductors of the expedition kept hollowing out 
come, come, my lads, be quick! along with the 
b— gers ! ihe tide falls apace : there is no time to 
be lost. 



Vol IV. Page 151. 
Seguinel, one of the Company of Marat, in- 



97 

forms the tribunal that Goullin and Chaux con- 
ducted some of the company, one day, to the 
house of Carrier. When we came, says this un- 
der cut-throat, into the presence of the Represen- 
tative of the people, our conductors told him we 
were good lads, citizens on whom he might rely. 
So much the better, says Carrier, adding, depend 
on it, my boys, if you do your duty like good 
b — gers, the Republic, which is never ungrateful, 
will pay you well. 

While we were there, says the witness, Lam- 
bertye came, and went into another room with 
Carrier. Goullin asked Grand Maison who that 
man was. He is a second Marat, replied the latter ; 
and is now, without doubt, receiving orders to 
communicate to us. 



Marat. 

The name of Marat has been so often mention- 
ed, it may not be improper, or out of place, to give 
the reader here some account of that famous cut- 
throat. 

Before the Revolution, he was an obscure beg- 
garly fellow, that was daily liable to be brought 
before the officer of police to account of the manner 
in which he got his bread. Biit, when this grand 
event took place ; when murderers were wanted 
in every quarter of the country, he began to cut a 
figure on the scene. He published a gazette, in 



98 

which he inculcated the necessity of lopping off 
the heads of thousands at a time, and of watering, 
as he called it, the tree of liberty with the blood 
of the aristocrats, as the only means of rendering 
it fruitful. 

These, and such like sentiments, recommended 
him to the notice of his countrymen : he obtained 
their confidence, and was one of the organizers 
(to use a French term) of the massacres of the 
2d and 3d of September, 1792, of which I have 
spoken in the first chapter of this work. On this 
occasion he was an actor also, and is said to have 
cut above fifty throats with his own hands. 

It would have been something unjust if a man 
like this had been forgotten, when the Convention 
was to assemble. He was not. The people of 
Paris, who had been eye witnesses of his merit, 
chose him for one of their representatives ; and 
he was faithful in the execution of his trust ; for 
he never talked about any thing but of throats to 
cut, stabbing and guillotining. 

His career, however, was but short. His own 
neck was not made of iron : a desperate woman, 
who had adopted his principles, rushed into his 
apartment, and delivered the world of one of the 
greatest monsters that ever dishononoured it. 

There was something horrible in the look of 
this villain. He was very short and thick, had a 
black beard ascending nearly to the extreme cor- 



99 

uers of his eyes. This beard was usually long, 
and his hair short, sticking up like bristles. He 
had ever been dirty^ and it may be imagined, that 
the fashions of a revolution which has made it a 
crime to be well dressed^ had not improved his 
appearance : in short, he was, at the very best, a 
most disgusting mortal, and, therefore, when he 
came out of the prison of La Force, all covered 
with filth and gore, wielding a pistol in one hand 
and a dagger in the other, no wonder that even 
the sanguinary mob ran back for fear. 



Charlotte Cor dee. 

As I have entered on a digression, I will con- 
tinue it a little longer, to give the reader an ac- 
count of the execution of Charlotte Cordee, the 
young woman that murdered Marat. 

She was not what is commonly called an aris- 
tocrat ; but a patriot of another faction than Marat. 
She was, as it is said, employed by the party of 
Brissot, who, from the accomplishments of Marat, 
were afraid that he would totally engross the 
favour and affections of the people. Poor Char- 
lotte received her reward on the scaffold, and a 
very just reward too ; but there is something so 
shocking in the behaviour of her executioner, that 
it ought not to be omitted in a collection of this 
kind. 

She was a beautiful young woman ; extremely 



100 

fair; and, in any other country, would have 
brought tears of compassion from the spectators. 
The executioner, after having cut off her head, 
seized it by the fine long hair, and, holding it up 
by one hand, the brutal ruffian gave her a slap in 
the face with the other. " The bitch blushes," 
cried he, " at any rate." This trait of hangman 
wut, excited the savage mirth of the populace.* 



We must now return to Nantz, where we shall 
find the revolutionary committee employed in 
writing to their friends at Paris. 

Before they began to drown and shoot by hun- 
dreds, they had seized on the persons of one hun- 
dred and thirty- two of the most opulent men in 
the city, and sent them off to Paris to be tried as 
suspected persons. It appears, from the whole 
course of the evidence on this head, that the de- 
tachment of patriots who conducted them, were, 
if any pretence could be found, to murder them 
all by the way. This, however, did not happen. 
The prisoners arrived safe at Paris, and the com- 
mittee were obliged to have recourse to other 
means, to prevent their return. The one that 
they adopted was to insure their guillotining at 
Paris ; and, for thts purpose, they wrote to the 
revolutionary committee of the section of Lepel- 

* It is something very remarkable, that her face, severed 
from the body, should blush ; but it is a real fact, as appears 
from an essay lately published at Philadelphia, in Gatreau's 
gazette. 



101 



letier. — Their letter is, and 1 hope it ever will be, 
a curiosity in this country. 1 shall give it a literal 
translation, that the reader may be able to do 
justice to the memory of the writers. 



Vol IV. Fage 179. 

Nmitz, this 5th of Pluviose.— Libert j. Equality^ 

or Death, 

Citizens, 

. The people of Nantz, whom we have sent to 
Paris, are big villains, all marked with the seal 
of reprobation, and known for counter-revolution- 
ists. We are collecting proofs against them, 
which we vshall send, when the bundle is made 
up, to the revolutionary judges. In the mean 
time, we denounce to you. Julienne, who has 
officiously taken upon him the defence of these 
uncivic vermin. 



Vol IV Page 280. 

Fxom the moment the revolutionary committee 
was installed, says Benety the imprisonments be- 
^an ; and they augmented daily. They were all 
dictated by animosity, hatred, or avarice. To 
such a degree did terror prevail, that every man 
trembled for his life. 

For my part, says the witness, my resolution 
was taken* I always went with two loaded pis- 

i2 



102 

tols in my pockets : one for the villian that should 
offer to seize me, and the other for myself. Cruel 
expectation, for a man who had a small helpless 
family. But, I had seen six hundred men at one 
time plunged into the water, and had been a wit- 
ness of shootings amounting to three thousand 
six hundred persons at the Gigan : after this what 
could any man hope for. 

There is reason to believe, that Carrier meant 
to murder the whole city ; for, before his jourmy 
to Paris, he told one of the women whom he 
kept, and whose husband he had put to death, 
that he would make Nantz remember the name of 
Carrier ; do not fear, my dear, said he, all my 
friends shall follow me ; but as for the city it 
shall be destroyed. (Page 219.) 

I was, one day, adds the same witness, sent by 
jBodin to see some bodies buried, that were left 
on the public square. There were upwards of 
thirty women, all naked, and exposed with the 
most horrible indecency. 



Vol IV. Page 206. 

Fontaine, I went one day to a prison where 
a great many women and children were confined* 
My business was to deliver provisions ta these 
people ; but I found neither fire, lights, nor any 
thing else. I called for a candle in order to enter 
this abode of horror. The prisoners were lying 



103 

here and there on the bare boards, though it was 
extremely cold. 

In a second visit that I made here, I found the 
poor unhappy creatures in a worse situation than 
before ; I saw a woman lying dead, and a suck- 
ling child, at a little distance from her, wallowing 
about in the filth. Its little face was absolutely 
covered with ordure. I gave the keeper ten livres 
to take care of this helpless infant, till I could 
iind a nurse ; but, when i came for it, it was 
gone ; and Dumey told me, that the English 
prisoners had taken the child^ with a promise to 
do well by it. 

It seems, from the evidence of several witness- 
es, that, while these villains were butchering, or 
stifling their own countrymen, they took care to 
treat foreign prisoners with some sort of humani- 
ty. This distinction fully proves, that they acted 
by the authority of the Convention. But we 
shall see this so incontestibly proved by-and-by^ 
that the remark is hardly necessary here. 

Vol IV. Page 210. 

I saw, says the same witness, a man, named 
Gorgo, come and ask for a little boy, that he said 
he had obtained permission to take. The child 
was found behind a bundle of stuff, where he had 
run to hide upon hearing voices. Gorgo brought 
him to the door-way, and made him dance and 
sing. 



104 

I have selected this last fact to show to what a 
pitch of obduracy, of unfeeling indifference, these 
people were arrived. A thousand volumes could 
not paint their familiarity with scenes of horror 
so well as this trifling circumstance of making a 
child dance and sing, at the entrance of a cavern 
of despair, a human slaughter house, where per- 
haps his own parents were at that moment groan- 
ing their last. 



Vol, IV, Page 210. 

Chaiix, one of the criminals, informs the tribu- 
nal, that he was dispatched from Nantz to wait on 
Carrier, during his stay at Paris. He told me, 
says Chaux, that he did not like Philippes, and 
that we should guillotine him, at my return. — I 
have communicated, says Carrier, all our pro- 
ceedings to the National Convention. — You must 
not, adds he, try Lambertye ; he is too precious 
a patriot. I intend to send for him here, and 
present him to the committee of public preserva- 
tion (salut public) who will not leave him unre- 
compensed for his services. 

Jicquieau says (Page 276,) that Lambertye 
was the chief murderer, — This it was that made 
him a precious patriot, and a man worthy of re- 
ward from a committee of the National Conven- 
tion. 

This witness adds : when the committee of 



105 

Naiitz was first installed, a deputation was seiit 
to Carrier, to let him know that no proofs could 
be made out against Jomard. The representative 
of the people, seeing the deputation enter, cried 
out, what are all these b — gers come here for ? 
When he heard our business, to hell with yoti, 
says he, you fool. But, seeming to grow a little 
calm, he called me back into his room, and threat- 
ened to throw me out of the window. At last, 
says the witness, he told me there were other 
means besides guillotining ; you have only, say§ 
he, to send Jomard into the country, and have 
him dispatched secretly. 

Here we behold a member of the National 
Convention of France ; one of those philosophi- 
cal legislators, who call themselves the enlighten- 
ers of the universe. This base, this cowardly 
cut-throat, this assassin-general, is one of those 
men, whom we have been told, are to regenerate 
mankind, and to establish a system of universal 
humanity ! 



The following traits well depict the leaders in 
the French Revolution. 



Vol IV. Page 213. 

Robin, says a witness, was one of the accom- 
plices of Carrier. This Robin, one day, showed 
his sabre, all stained with blood, saying at the 



106 

same time, with this I chopped off sixty of the 
heads of the aristocrats that we drowned last 
night. 

Vol IK Page 209. 

Fontaine informs the tribunal, that he was one 
night at the Entrepot, Here, says the witness, 
I saw a little man (this afterwards appears to 
have been Fouquet) wearing pantaloons, and a 
liberty cap. It is I, said the little monster, who 
conduct all the drownings ; it is I who give the 
word of command to pull up the plugs ; nothing 
is done without my orders. If you will come 
along with me, continued he, I will show you 
how to feed upon the flesh of an aristocrat ; I 
will regale you wdth the brains of those rascals. 
— I trembled, says the witness, and got away 
from this cannibal as soon as I could. 



Vol, IV, Page 276. 

Fonthonne informs the tribunal, that he was 
one day invited to a dinner, in a pleasure garden 
belonging to Ducrois. Carrier and O'Sullivan 
were of the party. The conversation turned on 
the bodily strength of certain persons, when 
O'Sullivan observed ; '' yes, there vi^as my bro- 
ther, who was devilish strong, particularly in the 
neck, for the executioner was obliged to give him 
the second stroke with the national razor ^ before 
he could get his head off." 



107 

The witness adds : O'Sullivaii told us, that he 
was going to drown a man much stronger than 
himself; that the man resisted, but was knocked 
down ; then, says O' Sullivan, 1 took my knife 
and stuck him, as butchers do the sheep. 

Guedon informs the tribunal (Vol. IV. Page 
277) that he was at the same dinner, mentioned 
by Fontbonne. I was seated, says this witness, 
by the side of O' Sullivan ; and, during the re- 
past, he held up his knife to me, and said, this is 
excellent to cut a man's throat with ; adding, that 
it had already done him good service in that way. 
He called on Robin as a witness of his bravery, 
and told us the manner in which he proceeded. — 
I had remarked, says O'Sullivan, that the butch- 
ers killed their sheep by plunging their knife in 
underneath the ear ; so, when I had a mind to 
kill a prisoner, I came up to him, and, clapping 
him on the shoulder in a jocular way, pointed to 
some object that he was obliged to turn his head 
to see ; the moment he did this, I had my knife 
through his neck. 

This O' Sullivan, in his defence, says, that, as 
to his brother, he was an enemy of the Republic. 
When he saw, says this human butcher, that 
there was no hope for him, he came and threw 
himself into my arms ; but, like a good republi- 
can^ I gave him up to the guillotine. 

Vol IL Page 2S1. 
A witness says, that Goullin beat his own 



108 

father with a stick, when the old man was on his 
death-bed ; and adds, that his father died in two 
hours after. 

This same Goullin (Vol. II. Page 253) said in 
the tribune of his club, take care not to admit 
among you moderate men, half patriots. Admit 
none but real revolutionists ; none but patriots 
who have the courage to drink a glass of human 
blood, warm from the veins. 

Goullin, so far from denying this, says before 
the tribunal, (Page 254,) that he glories in think- 
ing like Marat, who would willingly have quench- 
ed his thirst with the blood of the aristocrats. 

I shall conclude this chapter, this frightful tra- 
gedy exhibited at Nantz, with the relation of a 
few traits of diabolical cruelty, which not only 
surpass all that the imagination has hitherto 
been able to conceive, but even all that has been 
related in this volume. I have classed these facts 
together, that the indignant reader may tear out 
the leaf, and commit it to the flames. 

Yes, (says the author of La Conjuration, page 
160,) yes ; we have seen a representative of the 
people, a member of the National Convention, tie 
four children, the eldest of which was but sixteen 
years of age, to the four posts of the guillotine, 
while the blood of their father and mother stream- 
ed on the scaffold, and even dropped on their 
heads. 



109 



I Vol V. Page 36. 

Lailet deposes, that Deron came to the popu- 
lar society with a man's ear, pinned to the na- 
tional cockade, which he wore in his cap. He 
went about, says the witness, with a pocket full 
of these ears, which he made the female prison- 
ers kiss. If I was not afraid, adds the witness, 
of for ever blackening the page of our history, I 
would here relate a fact, that calls down tenfold 
vengeance on the head of this monster. 

The witness is ordered to proceed. 

This same Deron, adds the witness, carried 
about him a handful of private parts, which he had 
cut from the men whom he had murdered ; and 
these he showed to the women, whenever an og- 
casion offered. 

This last trait, abominable as it is, might hav€ 
been mentioned in a Paris tribunal, without that 
ceremony which the witness made use of; for 
even the ivomen of Paris had set Deron the ex- 
ample. Their knives had been exercised on the 
dead bodies of the Swisses, who were killed at the 
king's castle, on the 10th of August, 1792. On 
that very 10th of August, which has so often been 
celebrated on this continent. 



K 



110 



Vol IL Page 267. 

Many of the generals in La Vendee, says For- 
get, made it their glory to imitate the horrid 
butchers at Nantz. They committed unheard of 
cruelties and indecencies. General Duquesnoy 
murdered several infants at the breast, and after- 
wards attempted to lie with the mothers ; but not 
being able to succeed, , he had the operation per- 
formed another way. This he called electrifying. 

This is the infernal monster that styled himself 
the butcher of the Convention, and that said, no- 
thing hurt him so much as not being able to serve 
them in the capacity of executioner. 

Vol IL Page 12^. 

I saw, says Girault, about three or four hun- 
dred persons drowned. There were women of 
all ages among them ; some were big with child, 
and of these several were delivered in the very 
lighters, among water and mud. This most 
shocking circumstance, their groans, their heart- 
piercing shrieks, excited no compassion. They, 
Ivith the fruit of their conjugal love, went to the 
bottom together. 

Vol IL Page 153. 

Coron, A woman going to be drowned, was 
taken in child-birth ; she was in the act of de- 



Ill 

livery, when the horrid villains tore the child from 
her body, stuck it on the point of a bayonet, and 
thus carried it to the river. 

A fourth of these our representatives (says the 
author of La Conjuration^ page 160,) a fourth, 
(great God 1 my heart dies within me,) a fourth 
ripped open the wombs of the mothers ; tore out 
the palpitating embryo, to deck the point of a 
pike of liberty and equality ! 



The reader's curiosity may, perhaps, lead him 
to wish to know the w hole number of persons put 
to death at Nantz ; but, in this, it would be diffi- 
cult to gratify him. I have been able to obtain 
hxxt jive volumes of the trial, which makes only a 
part of that work ; probably the last volume may 
contain an exact account as to numbers. The 
deaths must, hewever, have been immense, since 
a witness deposes (Vol. III. Page 6b) to the 
drowning of nine thousand persons ; and another 
witness (Vol. II. Page 253) attests, that seven 
thousand five hundred were shot en masse, 

TJie number of bodies thrown into the river 
Loire, which is half the width of the Delaware 
at Philadelphia, was so considerable, that the 
municipal officers found it necessary to issue a 
proclamation (Vol. V. Page 70) forbidding the 
use of its ivaters. 

It has been generally computed that the num- 



112 

ber of persons, belonging to this unfortunate 
city and its environs, who were drowned, shot 
en masse, guillotined, and stifled or starved in 
prison, amounted to shout forty thousand. And, 
this computation is corroborated by the author of 
La Conjuration, who says, (Page 159 ;) the 
number of persons murdered in the south of 
France, during the space of a very few months, 
is reckoned at a hundred thousand. The bodies 
thrown into the Loire are innumerable. Carrier 
alone put to death more than forty thousand, in- 
cluding men, women and children. 

It appears, then, that these bloody revolution- 
ists, who styled themselves the friends of freedom 
and of mankind, destroyed, in one city of France, 
a population equal to that of the capital of the 
United States. 



CHAP. IV. 



Facts from several ivorks, proving that the cruel- 
ties related in the preceding chapters, ivere au- 
thorized, or approved of by the National As- 
semblies, 

After having led the reader through such 
rivers of blood, it seems indispensably necessary 
to insert a few facts, showing by whose authority 
that blood was spilt ; for, it could answer no 



113 

good purpose to excite his detestation, without 
directing it towards the proper object. 

When the French first began that career of 
insurrection, robbery and murder, which assuni- 
edthe name of a Revolution, the people of this 
country, or at least the most numerous part of 
them, felt uncommon anxiety for its success. The 
people were deceived ; but the deception was an 
agreeable one ; the word Revolution had of it- 
self very great charms, but when that of Liberty 
was added to it, it could not fail of exciting en- 
thusiasm. This enthusiasm was, indeed, nearly 
general ; and this alone was a sufficient induce- 
ment for the public prints to become the parti- 
zans of Condorcet and Mirabeau. All the ave- 
nues to truth were at once barred up ; and, 
though the revolutionists every day changed their 
creed, though one revolving moon saw them make 
and break their oaths, all was amply atoned for 
by their being engaged in a Revolution. 

As the Revolution advanced the enthusiasm 
increased ; but from the moment that the French 
nation declared itself a Republic^ this enthusiasm 
was changed to madness. All the means by 
which this change of government was accom- 
plished were totally overlooked ; nothing was 
talked or dreamed of but the enfranchisement of 
the world ; the whole universe was to become a 
republic, or be annihilated ; and happy was he 
who could bawl loudest about a certain some- 
thing, called liberty and equality. 

k2 



114 

During this political madness, however, now 
and then a trait of shocking barbarity, in spite 
of all the endeavours of the public papers, 
burst in upon us, and produced a lucid interval ; 
but these intervals have never yet been of long 
duration ; because every subterfuge, that interest- 
ed falsejiood can devise, has been made use of to 
give our abhorrence a direction contrary to that 
which it ought to have taken. We have heard 
Brissot, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, all ac- 
cused in their turns of shedding innocent blood ; 
but the National Assembly itself, they tell us, has 
ever remained worthy of our admiration. The 
poor unsuccessful agents of this terrible divan 
have been devoted to execration, as tyrants, while 
their employers have been, and are yet held up to 
us, as the friends of liberty and the lovers of man- 
kind. 

Without further remark, I shall add such facts 
as I imagine, will enable every reader to judge 
for himself. 

To begin wdth the constituent assembly ; one 
proof of their approving of murder will suffice. 
They honoured with the title of vanquishers, a 
blood-thirsty mob, w^ho after having taken two 
men prisoners, cruelly massacred them, and car- 
ried their heads about the streets of Paris on a 
pike. See Rabaud?s history of the French Revo- 
lution, page 106. 

The second Assembly, when they received ad- 



115 

vices of the murders of Jaudon and his associates 
at Avignon, as mentioned in the first chapter of 
this work, threatened the member who communi- 
cated the news, because he had called the murder- 
ers brigands^ and not patriots. See La Gazette 
Universelie for the month of May 1792. — And, 
how did this Assembly behave, when informed of 
the massacres in the prisons of Paris, during the 
first days of September, 1792? Tallien (of whom 
we have lately heard so much) came to the Na- 
tional Assembly, and informed them of the murder- 
ing in the following remarkable words: "The 
commissaries have done all they could to prevent the 
disorders (the massacreing the prisoners is what he 
calls disorders) but they have not been able to 
stop the, in some sort, just vengeance of the peo- 
ple." — The Assembly heard this language very 
quietly, and Dr. Moore, from whose journal (page 
178) the fact is taken, makes an apology for the 
Assembly, by saying that they were overaived ; 
but it has since fully appeared, that the leading 
members were the very persons who contrived 
the massacre, with the aid of Petion, Manuel, 
and Marat. — It is a well known fact, recorded by 
the Abbe Barruel (page 334) that Louvet, one of 
the members of the present Assembly, gave, the 
day after the September massacre, an order on the 
public treasury, in the following words: " On 
sight, pay to the foun hearers each twelve livres, 
for aiding in the dispatching of the priests at the 
prison of St, Firminy — Louvet was, at the time 
of writing this note on demand for murderer's 
wages, a legislator; and I cannot help remarking 



lie 

here, that a printer of a news-paper in the United 
States, has lately boasted, that this Louvet, 
" now president of the first Assembly on earth," 
says our printer, was the editor of a gazette ! — 
People should be cautious how they boast of re- 
lationship with the legislators in that country of 
equality. 

As it will no longer be pretended, I suppose, 
that this second Assembly disapproved of the 
murders that were committed under their reign, 
I will now turn to the third Assembly, which we 
commonly call a Convention. And, not to tire 
the reader with proofs of what is self evident, I 
shall confine myself to an extract or two from 
the trial of Carrier and the revolutionary commit- 
tee of Nantz. 



Vol K Page 49. 

It is time, says Goullin, to tear aside the veil. 
The representatives, Bourbotte and Bo, knew all 
about the drownings and shootings ; and Bo even 
said to Huchet, in speaking of the members of 
the revolutionary committee, that it was not for 
the murders that they were to be tried. 

After this the counsellor for the committee, 
asks this citizen Bo, what was the real motive 
-for bringing the committee to trial ; and the other 
confesses, that it was for their having misapplied 
the treasures taken from the prisoners. He pre- 



117 

tends (page 60) though he had taken the place of 
Carrier at Nautz, and though the water of the 
iiver could not be drank, on account of the dead 
bodies that were floating on it ; though a hundred 
or two of ditches had been dug to put the people 
into that were shot, and though the city was filled 
with cries and lamentations ; notwithstanding all 
this, he pretends that he could say nothing, for 
certain, about the murders. 

This representative Bo (page 83,) is convicted 
of having himself justified the conduct of the 
committee and of Carrier. 

Carrier, in his defence, says, that he had done 
no more than his duty, and that the Convention 
had been regularly informed of every thing. They 
complain now, says he, (page 119) of shooting en 
masse, as if the same had not been done at Angers, 
Saumur, Laval, and every where else, 

A witness (Vol. V. Page 60,) informs the tri- 
bunal, that he, who was himself a member of the 
Convention, had informed that body of all the 
horrors that were committed at Nantz, and parti- 
cularly of the massacres of women and children. 

The author of La Conjuration, so often quoted 
says (page 162 :) When the bloody Carrier wrote 
to the Convention that he was dispatching hun- 
dreds at a time by means of lighters with plugs 
in the bottom. Carrier was not blamed ; on the 
contrary, he was repeatedly applauded, as being 



118 

the author of an invention that did honour to hi^ 
country. 

The following extract will show that the author 
of the History of Jacobinism agrees with me in 
opinion here. In speaking of the massacres of 
Paris, he says : 

" The revolution had now taken so horrible and 
so decided a turn, the different rulers, whether 
Girondists or Mountaineers, were all so evidently 
culpable, and so deeply immersed in guilt, that 
there is neither room nor occasion for any dispute 
about the difference of culpability. It might do 
for themselves to make distinctions and to claim 
one action as patriotism, and blame another as 
oppression and injustice; but we must confess 
that, except to themselves, no such distinctions 
are apparent. 

" It would be useless to fatigue ourselves by 
following out the manoeuvres of the leading par- 
ties, in order to conceal their participation; that 
would be supposing a possibility of doubt con- 
cerning their guilt, when there can be none. All 
that can be admitted is, that there were some in- 
dividuals who co-operated more through fear than 
through guilt ; but that there is any difference of 
criminality amongst the leaders, we must absolute- 
ly deny, when the public force was ten times 
more than sufficient to have prevented the massa- 
cres from beginning, or to have stopped them ia 
the first hour when begun. 



119 

" Let us turn away from these dreadful scenes 
a moment, and consider the language of Roland, 
who, as first minister, might have made an effort 
to stop this bloody career. Roland was the chief 
of the party, which affected to blame these ex- 
cesses : from his letter we shall see that it was to 
the continuation of insurrection and insubordina- 
tion that he attributed all this. The whole of the 
letter is long, and much of it consists of a profes- 
sion of faith, and a regard to conscience, which 
if it had spoke very loudly, would have told him 
that he should have been protecting his fellow 
creatures, and exacting obedience to the law, in 
preference to writing long letters on the 4th of 
September; but the following phrases are com- 
plete, without any thing added or taken away 
that may alter their meaning." 



" I know that revolutions are not to be calcu- 
lated by common rules ; but I know likewise, that 
the power which makes them ought soon to ar- 
range itself under obedience to the law, if total 
destruction is not intended . The anger of the peo- 
ple and the movement of insurrection are compar- 
able to the action of a torrent, which overturns 
obstacles which no other power is able to destroy, 
but of which the overspreading will carry far and 
wide the ravage and devastation, if it does not 
soon return to its usual course. The day of the 
1 0th of August, it is evident, was necessary ; with- 
out it we should have been lost; the court had 
prepared long before to complete its treasons, by 



120 

spreading the standard of death over Paris, and to 
reign by fear." 

But, what need have we of these proofs ! What 
other testimony do we want, than that contained 
in their own murderous decrees ? Let any one cast 
his eye on the opposite page ; let him there be- 
hold the scene that was daily exhibited before the 
windows of their hall, and then let him say whe- 
ther they delighted in murder or not. Blood is 
their element, as water is that of the finny race.* 

One thing, however, remains to be accounted 
for ; and that is, how so great a part of the nation 
were led to butcher each other ; how they were 
brought to that pitch of brutal sanguinary ferocity, 
which we have seen so amply displayed in the 
preceding chapters. This is what, with the rea- 
der's indulgence, I shall now, agreeably to my 
promise, endeavour to explain. 

See the Appendix, No. L 



121 



CHAP. V. 

TTie horrors of the French Revolution traced to 
their real causes, the licentious politics and in- 
fidel philosophy of the present age. 

That the French were an amiable people, the 
whole civilized world has given abundant testi- 
mony, by endeavouring to imitate them. There 
was not a nation in Europe but had, in some de- 
gree, adopted their language and their fashions : 
and all those individuals, belonging even to their 
haughty rival enemy, who travelled in their coun- 
try, were led by an involuntary impulse into an 
imitation of their manners. 

The prominent feature in their national charac- 
ter was, it is true, levity; but, though levity and 
ferociousness may, and often do, meet in the same 
person, no writer, that I recollect, had ever accus- 
ed the French of being cruel. If we are to judge 
of their disposition by their national sports and en- 
tertainments, we shall find no room to draw a 
conclusion against their humanity. Those cruel 
diversions, where men become the bullies of brute 
creatures, and laugh at seeing them goad, and bite, 
and tear each other to pieces, were never known 
in France. Even in their theatrical performances 
a dead body was never exhibited on the scene : 
such a spectacle was thought to be too much for 
the feelings of the audience. The works of their 



122 

favourite authors generally breathe the greatest 
tenderness and humanity. The nation that could 
produce, and admire, a Marmontel and a Racine, 
could not be naturally bloody minded. 

" To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, 
I turn— and France displays her bright domain. 
Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 
Pleas'd with thyself whom all the world can please : 
How often have I led thy sportive choir, 
With tuneless pipe beside the murm'ring Loire ! 
Where shading elms along the margin grew, 
And, freshen'd from the wave the zephyr flew ; 
And haply, tho' my harsh touch, falt'ring still, 
But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill, 
Yet would the village praise my wound'rous pow'r, 
And dance forgetful of the noon-tide hour ! 
Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days 
Have led their children thro' the mirthful maze 5 
And the gay grand-sire, skilled in gestic lore, 
Has frisk'd beneath the burden of three-score. 
So blest a life these thoughtless realms display, 
Thus idly busy rolls their world away : 
Theirs are those arts which mind to mind endear ; 
For honour forms the social temper here." 

These verses, extracted from the most elegant 
poems, dictated by the best of hearts, contain the 
justest character of the French nation, that I have 
ever yet seen. To this character I am ready to 
subscribe : for, I too have been charmed with 
their gentle manners and their social ease : I too 
have felt the powder of those arts w^hich endear 
mind to mind : I have been a witness of their ur- 



123 

banity, their respectful deference and attention to 
the softer sex, their paternal tenderness, and their 
veneration for old age. 

Whence, then, the mighty, the dreadful change ? 
What is it that has transformed a great portion of 
this airy humane people into a horde of sullen as- 
sassins ? What is it that has converted these 
thoughtless realms, this gay sprightly land of 
mirth, this bright domain, into a gloomy wilder- 
ness, watered with rivers of human blood ? This 
ought to be the great object of our inquiries: this 
ought to fix all our attention. Without determining 
this point, we can draw no profit from the prece? 
ding relation ; and, without attempting it, I should 
have undertaken the unpleasant task of holding 
the French people up to reproach and detestation, 
to no manner of purpose. 

It has been asserted, again and again, by the 
partizans of the French revolution, that all the 
crimes which have disgraced it, are to be ascribed 
to the hostile operations of their enemies. They 
have told us, that, had not the Austrians and Prus- 
sians been on their march to Paris, the prisoners 
would not have been massacred, on the 2d and 3d 
of September, 1792. But, can we possibly con- 
ceive how the murder of 8,000 poor prisoners, 
locked up and bound, could be necessary to the 
defence of a capital, containing a million of inha- 
bitants ? Can we believe that the sabres of the 
assassins would not have been more effectually 
employed against the invaders, than against de- 



124 



^ 



fenceless priests and women. The deluded popu- 
lace were told not " to leave the wolves in the fold 
while they went to attack those that were with- 
out." But these wolves, if they were such, were 
in prison ; were under a guard, a hundred thou- 
sand times as strong as themselves, and could have 
been destroyed at a moment's warning. There 
is something so abominably cowardly in this jus- 
tijfication, that it is even more base than the crime. 
Suppose that a hundred thousand men had 
marched from Paris, to make head against the 
Austrians and Prussians, there were yet nine 
hundred thousand left to guard the unhappy 
wretches that were tied hand and foot. Where 
could be the necessity of massacreing them ? 
Where could be the necessity of hacking them to 
pieces, tearing out their bowels, and biting their 
hearts ? 

Subsequent events have fully proved, that it 
was not danger that produced these bloody mea- 
sures : for, we have ever seen the revolutionists 
most cruel in times of their greatest security. 
Their butcheries at Lyons and in its neighbour- 
hood, did not begin till they were completely tri- 
umphant. It was then, at the moment when they 
had no retaliation to fear, that they commenced 
their bloody work. Carrier, lolling at his ease, 
sent the victims to death by hundreds. The 
blood never flowed from the guillotine in such tor- 
rents, as at the very time when their armies were 
driving their enemies before them in every direc- 
tion. 



125 

Charles Fox, (who, by the by, would not have 
made a bad cut-throat general) had the folly and 
impudence to say, in the British house of Com- 
mons, that the massacres in France ought to be 
attributed to the Allied Powers. " You hunt 
them like wild beasts," said this humane and 
honest swindler, " and then you complain of them 
for being ferocious." How this hunting, as Fox 
calls it, could drive the French to butcher one an- 
other, I cannot see ; but, if it was a justifiable 
reason for them, it might certainly be applied with 
much more justice to their enemies ; for these 
have been oftener obliged to fly than the French. 
The revolutionary armies have overrun an extent 
of territory equal to one third of their own coun- 
try: the Savoyards, the Germans, the Flemings, 
the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the English, have 
been obliged to fly before them ; but we have 
heard of no massacres among these people. The 
French most unmercifully put to death eight thou= 
sand of their country people, who were in the 
prisons of Paris, and, as an excuse for this, they 
tell us that the Duke of Brunswick had invaded 
the province of Champagne ; but they them- 
selves have overrun all the United Netherlands^ 
and even taken possession of the capital ; and we 
have not heard, that the Dutch have, as yet, been 
guilty of a single massacre. They have found but 
one place, in all their career, where the people 
could be prevailed on to erect a guillotine, and 
that was at Geneva. Here their army was more 
numerous than the whole population of the state, 
and therefore their system was fully adopted ; yet 

L .2 



126 ^ 

even here, among this little debased and tyran- 
nized people, there were to be found no villains 
infamous enough to imitate their masters in mur- 
dering women and children. That was a species 
of slaughter reserved for the French nation alone.* 

The French revolution has been compared to 
that of America, and I have heard some men, 
calling themselves Americans, who have not been 
ashamed to say, that as great cruelties were com- 
mitted in this country as in that. I would now 
ask these men, who are so anxious to be thought 
as bloody as the sans-culotte French, if they can 
give me one instance of the Americans murder- 
ing their towns-men at the approach of the ene- 
my ? When the British army succeeded that of 
the Congress at Philadelphia, did the continental 
troops murder all the tOries before they quitted 
the city ? Can these generous friends of the 
French revolution tell us of any massacres that 
took place in this country ? Did they ever hear 
of women and children being drowned and shot 
hy hundreds ? Seven years of civil war desolated 
these states, but the blood of one single woman 
or child never stained the earth. 

If the doctrine of the profligate Charles Fox 
be admitted, if a people be justifiable in enter- 
ing on a series of masacres, the instant they are 
,4)ressed by an enemy from without, what safety 
can there be for any of us ? If a declaration of 

See the Appendix, No. II. 



m 

war is to unsheath the daggers of all the assas- 
sins in the community, civil society is the great- 
est curse that ever fell upon mankind. Much 
better and safer were it for us to separate, and 
prowl about like savages, nay, like beasts, than 
to live thus, in continual trepidation, in continual 
fear for our throats. 

There is something so exceedingly cowardly 
and ridiculous in this justification, that even 
the French revolutionists are ashamed of it. 
They have recourse to another, «till more dis- 
honourable, it is true, but less cowardly. They 
tell us, that all the assassins in France have been 
in the pay of Great Britain ; or, to make use of 
their own expression, have been excited to action 
hy the " gold of Pitf^^ 

As I wish to advance nothing without the best 
possible authority, I shall here insert a passage 
on this subject, taken from a Gazette published 
at Philadelphia by one Gatreau, and at the press 
of Moreau de St, Mery, who was a member of 
the constituent assembly of France. 

The intention of the piece evidently is to jus- 
tify the French character, or rather the character 
of the French revolutionists, by attributing the 
horrid deeds these latter have committed, to some 
cause other than their own dispositions and anar- 
chical principles. To avoid all cavil with respect 
to the authenticity of the extract, and the cor- 
rectness of the translation, I will first give it in 



128 

French, and then in English, observing, for the 
further satisfaction of the reader, that he may 
find the piece entire in the Gazette above mention- 
ed, of the fourth of February, 1796. 

'' Quel homme eclaire par Pexperience, nieroit 
aujourd'hui, que, de la tete de Pitt sont sortis tous 
les crimes qui fesoient abhorrer la Revolution 
par ceux-la-meme qui en adoroient les principes ; 
que, c'est au foyer de la jalousie et de la haine 
Ailgloise, que s'allumerent les torches, que se 
forgerent les poignards, qui ont fait un monceau 
de cendres et de sang des plus belles possessions 
du monde ? Quel genie malfaisant crea les fac- 
tions impies, sanguinaires ou ambitieuses, qui de^ 
voient aneantir la France, ou du moins la replacer 
sous le joug, si la providence ne deconcertoit pas 
toujours les complots de Piniquite ? — Le genie 
infernal du ministre Anglois. — C'est avec I'or de 
ses victimes de PInde qu'il payoit le sang Fran- 
cois, verse a grand flots a Paris, dans les departe- 
mens, aux frontieres et dans les colonies." 

" What man, enlightened by experience, will 
now deny, that, from the head of Pitt have come 
all the crimes which have rendered the Revolution 
detestable in the eyes of even those who adored 
its principles ; that it was English jealousy and 
hatred that lighted the flames, and sharpened the 
poignards, which have reduced the finest posses- 
sions in the world to a heap of ashes and blood ? 
— What evil genius created the impious, sangui- 
nary and ambitious factions, that were to annihi- 



129 

late France ; or, at least, bend it again beneath 
the yoke, if Providence had not disconcerted the 
plans of iniquity ? — The infernal genius of the 
English minister. It was with the gold, drawn from 
his victims in India, that he paid for the French 
blood, which has flowed in rivers at Paris, in the 
departments, on the frontiers, and in the colo- 
nies." 

This is an important, and were it not so Very 
hackneyed and thread -bare, I would call it a 
^'precious confessions^ Here we see a French- 
man, a partizan of, and perhaps an actor in, the 
revolution, endeavouring to wipe away the stain 
on its principles, by ascribing all the horrors those 
principles have produced, to the gold distributed 
among the revolutionists by the English minister. 
The cruelties that have been committed, were 
not, then, necessary to the establishment of a 
free government ; they were not the effect of ir- 
ritation, of anarchial confusion, of vindictive re- 
taliation ; they were not the natural consequence 
of a long oppressed people's breaking their chains 
and rising on their tyrants ; all these excuses 
(which I must allow were silly enough) are at 
once done away by this new justification ; for 
we are here told, in so many words, that the 
French people have shed rivers of each other's 
blood, in every part of their dominions, purely 
for the love — not of liberty, but of the gold of 
Pitt 

There is such a natural connection between 



130 

the measures of the several National Assemblies 
and the massacres that were the immediate con- 
sequence of them, that it is impossible to effect a 
separation without the utmost violence to all man- 
ner of reasoning and truth. If it was the gold 
of Pitt that paid for all the French blood that has 
been spilled, it must have been that gold that paid 
for the inhuman murder of Messrs. Launy and 
Flessel, and it must have been that gold which 
induced the constituent assembly to sanction the 
murder, by giving the assassins of these gentle- 
men the title of heroes and conquerors^ and by 
instituting a national festival in their honour. 

The Revolution was begun, ajid has hitherto 
been maintained by the shedding of innocent 
blood; therefore, if it was the gold of Pitt that 
paid for that blood, it is to the gold of Pitt that 
the revolution is to be ascribed, and not to that pa- 
triotic spirit and love of liberty, with which we 
have been so long amused. In the fourth chapter 
of this work, it is incontestibly proved, that the 
several National Assemblies authorized or ap- 
proved of the massacres which have disgraced 
their country ; if, then, these massacres were paid 
for by Mr. Pitt, must we not inevitably conclude 
that the National Assemblies were in the same 
pay ! If Mr. Pitt paid for the blood of the family 
of Bourbon, for that of the king's guards, of the 
nobility, the clergy, the bankers, the merchants, 
in short, of all the rich or aristocrats, as they are 
called, it was Mr. Pitt who destroyed the monar- 
chy : it was he who caused France to be called a 



131 

Republic, and who gave rise to the doctrine of 
equality. Those, therefore, who talk of the gold 
of Pitt, must cease all their fulsome eulogiums on 
these gallant republicans ; for, if they are to have 
a republic, it will, according to their own confes- 
sions, be the work of the English minister. 

This vindication, throwing the blame on the 
gold of Pitt, amply participates in the misfortune 
of all the vindications that have lately appeared 
amongst us ; that is, it takes up a bad cause, and 
makes it worse. The reader will certainly feel, 
with me, an inexpressible indignation at a people, 
who^ because a hostile army was on their fron- 
tiers, could be prevailed on to butcher thousands 
upon thousands of their innocent countrymen ; 
who could cut the throats of their fathers and mo- 
thers, rip up the bowels of women with child, and 
carry about the trophies of their base and savage 
triumph on the points of their pikes and bayonets ; 
but, what will be his feelings, what will contain 
his swelling heart, when he is told, that all this 
was undertaken and perpetuated for foreign gold ? 
The revolutionists, by accusing Mr. Pitt of being 
at the bottom of their massacres, do not perceive, 
without doubt, that they are heaping ten times ten- 
fold infamy on themselves and their nation. 

By alleging this influence of British gold, the 
writer I have above quoted reduces himself and 
the partizans of the revolution to a most distres- 
sing dilemma. He owns that rivers of French 
blood have flowed at Paris, in the departments, 



132 

on the frontiers, and in the colonies ; and he tells 
us, that this blood was paid for with the gold of 
Pitt. Now, admitting this to be true, this blood 
has been shed, and this gold received, by French- 
men, To what, then, will our author ascribe this 
sanguinary avarice ? He must either ascribe it to 
the natural disposition of his countrymen ; or, a 
change in that natural disposition, produced by the 
revolution. It is uncertain which of these he may 
choose ; but it is very certain, choose which he 
will, that he has held up the character of his na- 
tion, or the principles of the revolution, to detesta- 
tion and abhorrence. This is the way he has jus- 
tified the French in the eyes of the people of this 
country. Infinitely better were it for such justifiers 
to suffer the press to rest in eternal inaction. All 
that a good Frenchman can do, is, to weep over 
the disgrace of his country ; for, so long as mur- 
der, horrid, barbarous, savage murder, shall admit 
of no excuse, so long shall the actions of the 
French revolutionists remain unjustifiable. 

It is more than probable, that a writer of this 
stamp might be willing to allow, that his country- 
men were always naturally ferocious and bloody- 
minded, rather than confess that this disposition 
has been produced by the principles of the revolu- 
tion; for, patriots of this kind are ever ready to 
sacrifice the honour of their country to the sup- 
port of their systems. But justice demands from 
us to reject, with disdain, every such conclusion. 
We have seen the French people sprightly, bene- 
ficent, humane and happy ; let us, now, follow 



133 

them, step by step, into the awful opposite, and 
see for ourselves, by what diabolical means the 
change has been effected. 

The first National Assembly had hardly assum- 
ed that title, when they discovered an intention of 
overturning the government, which they had been 
called together, and which their constituents had 
enjoined them, to support, and of levelling all 
ranks and distinctions among the different orders 
in the community. To this they were not led, as 
it has been so falsely pretended, by their love of 
liberty and desire of seeing their country happy ; 
but by envy, cursed envy, that will never let the 
fiery demagogue sleep in peace, while he sees a 
greater or richer than himself. It has been ob- 
jected to this, that there were among the revolu- 
tionists men who already enjoyed distinguished 
honours ; but it is forgotten, at the same time, 
that ambition will be at the top, or no where ; 
that it will destroy itself with the envied object, 
rather than act a subaltern part. The motto of a 
demagogue is that of Milton's Satan: ''rather 
reign in hell than serve in heaven." 

This task of destruction was, however, an ar- 
duous one. To tear the complicated work of 
fourteen centuries to pieces, at once, to render 
honours dishonourable, and turn reverential awe 
into contempt and mockery, was not to be ac- 
complished but by extraordinary means. It was 
evident that property must change hands, that the 
best blood of the nation must flow in torrents, or 

M 



134 

the project must fail. The Assembly, to arm the 
multitude on their side, broached the popular doc- 
trine of equality. It was a necessary part of the 
plan of these reformers to seduce the people to 
their support : and such was the credulity of the 
unfortunate French, that they soon began to look 
on them as the oracles of virtue and wisdom, and 
believed themselves raised, by one short sentence 
issued by these ambitious impostors, from the 
state of subjects to that of sovereigns,^ 

" I punished" (says Solon, the Athenian law^- 
giver) " I punished with death, all those aspiring 
disturbers of the commonwealth, who, in order to 
domineer themselves, and lead the vulgar in their 
train, pretended that all men were equal, and 
sought to confound the different ranks in society, 
by preaching up a chimerical equality, that never 
did or can exist." How happy would it have 
been for France, had there been some Solon, 
endued with wisdom and power enough to punish 
the political mountebanks of the Constituent As- 
sembly ! What dreadful carnage, what indelible 
disgrace, the nation would have escaped ! Hardly 
had the word equality been pronounced, when the 
whole kingdom became a scene of anarchy and 
confusion. The name of liberty (I say the name, 
*^K:^oy the regenerated French have known nothing 
of it but the name ;) the name of liberty had al- 
ready half turned the heads of the people, and 
that of equality finished the work. From the mo- 

* See the Appendix, No. III. 



135 

ment it sounded in their ears, all that had formerly 
inspired respect, all that they had reverenced and 
adored even, began to excite contempt and fury. 
Birth, beauty, old age, all became the victims of 
a destructive equality, erected into a law by aa 
Assembly of ambitious tyrants, who were ready 
to destroy every thing that crossed tlteir way to 
absolute domination. 

One of the immediate effects of the promulga- 
tion of this doctrine was the murder of Monsieur 
Foulon and his son-in-law Berthier, who, with- 
out so much as being charged with any crime, 
were taken by the people, conducted to Paris, 
and cruelly massacred. I will say nothing (says 
Du Gour, in his eloquent Memoire, page 35,) I 
will say nothing of the savage cruelties committed 
on Foulon and Berthier ; I will not represent the 
bloody head of the father-in-law, offered to the 
son to kiss, pressed against his lips, and after- 
wards put under his feet ; 1 will not represent the 
inhuman assassins rushing on Berthier, tearing 
out his heart, and placing it, quivering and still 
palpitating, on the table of the town-hall, before 
the magistrates of the section.— After this, their 
heads were stuck on pikes, and the heart of 
Berthier on the point of a sword. In this man- 
ner they were carried through the streets, followed 
by the exulting populace. (See Rahaud?s History 
of the French Revolution, page 117.) Nor let it 
be pretended that the Assembly could not prevent 
this shameful, this bloody deed. They had thfe 
absolute command of Paris at the time, and had 



^36 

two hundred thousand armed men ready to obey 
then' nod. But the Assembly never opposed the 
murder of those whom they looked upon as thek 
enemies ; nay, Rabaud, their partial historian (who 
was one of their body) even justifies the murder.* 

When the word equality found its way to the 
eolonies it was only a signal for assassination. At 
Port-au-Prince, the Chevalier de Mauduit, a brave 
and generous officer, who rendered essential ser- 
vices to this country during the last war, was 
murdered by his own soldiers. The villains had 
the insolence to order him to kneel down before 
them : *' No," said he, like a soldier as he was, 
'*it shall never be said, that Thomas Mauduit bent 
his knee before a set of scoundrels." — His head 
was cut off ; he was torn limb from limb ; his 
bowels were trailed along the street, as butchers 
do those of beasts in a slaughter house. The 
next morning the different members of his body, 
and morsels of his flesh, were seen strewed about 
opposite his house, and his bloody and ghastly 
head placed on the step of the door way.— We 
know, we have before our eyes the proofs of what 
havoc, distress and destruction, this detestable 
word has since produced in the unfortunate island 
of St. Domingo. t 

It was now that the sovereign people, entering 
on their reign, first took the famous plundering 

* See the Appendix, No. IV. 
t See the Appendix, No. V, 



137 

motto : ^^ La guerre aux chateaux et la paix aux 
chaumieres ;" that is, war to the gentlemen? s 
houses and peace to the cottage ; or, in other 
words, war to all those who have any thing to 
lose. This motto is extremely comprehensive ; 
it includes the whole doctrine of equality. It 
was not a vain declaration in France ; but was 
put in practice with that patriotic zeal which has 
marked the whole course of the revolution. To 
be rich or of a good family became a crime, 
which was often expiated by the loss of life. Men 
took as much pains to be thought obscure vaga- 
bonds, as they had formerly done to be thought 
wealthy and of honest descent ; and, what dis- 
tinguishes the French revolution from all others 
in the world, to have a ragged pair of breeches, 
or to be totally in want of that so necessary ar- 
ticle of dress, was esteemed the surest mark of 
pure patriotism, and was the greatest reconmien- 
dation to public favour* 

But the National Assembly, though heartily 
seconded by myriads of ragged populace, knew, 
however, that they could not long depend upon 
such a promiscuous support. The citizens, were, 
therefore, to be soldiers at the same time, and 
placed under the command of the creatures of 
the Assembly. To this end the teritory of the 
nation underwent a new division, on the levelling 
plan. The provinces of France were melted 
down into a rude undigested mass of departments, 
districts, and municipalities. All the old magis- 
trates were replaced by the vilest wretches that 

M 2 



138 

could be found. There were forty-four thousand 
municipalities, each of these had several muni- 
cipal officers, and each of these latter, his troop 
of revolutionary myrmidons. There could not 
be less than three millions of men in arms, ready 
to burn, cut and slay, at a moment's warning. 
Nothing was to be seen or heard but the patrol- 
ing of these sons of equality. The Assembly 
pretended to hold out the olive branch, while they 
were forming the nation into a camp. The peace- 
able man trembled for his life. One must have 
been an eye witness of the change produced by 
these measures, to have the least idea of it. All 
was suspicion and dread. The bell that had 
never rung but to call the peaceful villagers to 
the altar, was converted into a signal of approach- 
ing danger, and the tree, beneath which they for- 
irnerly danced, became an alarm post. The rag- 
ged greasy magistrates, with their municipal 
troops at their heels, were for ever prowling about 
for their prey, the property of others. These 
little platoons of cut-throats ranged the country 
round, crying havoc, burning and laying waste 
wherever they came. They had not yet begun 
to murder frequently, but it was little consequence 
to a man whether his brains were blowed out or 
not, after having seen himself and family reduced, 
in the space of a few hours, from affluence to 
beggary. A band of these enlightened ruffians 
went to the chateau^ or country house of a gen- 
tlemen in Provence, and demanded that his per- 
son should be delivered into their hands. The 
servants defended the house for some time, but 



139 

in vain'; they advanced to the front door, when 
the lady of the house appeared with a child in 
her arms, and endeavoured to pacify them, say- 
ing, that her husband was gone out at the back 
door. The ruffians instantly set fire to the house. 
When the lady perceived this, she confessed that 
her husband was hidden in one of the garrets. 
The house was now on fire ; she left her child 
and rushed through the flames to call her hus- 
band from his retreat, but she was stifled in the 
passage, and burnt to death, and her husband 
shared in her fate, leaving a helpless infant to the 
mercy of the murderers of its father and mother. 
— A hundred volumes like this could not contain 
the horrors that these revolutionary robbers com- 
mitted in the name of liberty and equality,' 



* 



Let this, Americans, be a lesson to you, throw 
from you the doctrine of equality, as you would 
the poisoned chalice. Wherever this detestable 
principle gains ground to any extent, ruin must 
inevitably ensue. Would you stifle the noble 
flame of emulation, and encourage ignorance and 
idleness ? Would you inculcate defiance of the 
laws ? Would you teach servants to be disobedi- 
ent to their masters, and children to their parents ? 
Would you sow the seeds of envy, hatred, rob» 
bery, and murder ? Would you break all the bands 
of society asunder, and turn a civilized people 
into a horde of savages ? This is all done by the 
comprehensive word equality. — But they tell us? 

* See the Appendix, No. VI. 



140 

we are not to take it in the unqualified sense. In 
what sense are we to take it then ? Either it 
means something more than liberty, or it means 
nothing at all. The misconstruction of the word 
liberty has done mischief enough in the world ; 
to add to it a word of a still more dangerous ex- 
tent, was to kindle a flame that never can be ex- 
tinguished but by the total debasement, if not 
destruction, of the society, who are silly or wicked 
enough to adopt its use. We are told, that eve- 
ry government receives with its existence the 
latent disease that is one day to accomplish its 
death ; but the government that is attacked with 
this political apoplexy is annihilated in the twink- 
ling of an eye. 

The civil disorganization of the state was but 
the fore-runner of those curses which the Assem- 
bly had in store for their devoted country. They 
plainly perceived, that they should never be able 
to brutify the people to their wishes, without re- 
moving the formidable barriers of religion and 
morality. Their heads were turned, but it was 
necessary to corrupt their hearts. 

Besides this, the leaders in the assembly were 
professed modern philosophers ; that is to say, 
atheists or deists. Camus and Condorcet openly 
taught atheism, and Ceruti said, with his last 
breath, " the only regret I have in quitting the 
worlds is J that 1 leave a religion on earth.^^ These 
words, the blasphemy of an expiring demon, 
were applauded by the assembled legislators. It 



141 

was not to be wondered at, that the vanity of 
such men should be flattered in the hope of chang- 
ing the most christian country into the most infi- 
del upon the face of the earth ; for, there is a 
sort of fanaticism in irreligion, that leads the 
profligate atheist to seek for proselytes with a 
zeal that would do honour to a good cause, but 
which, employed in a bad one, becomes the scourge 
of society. 

The zeal of these philosophers for extirpating 
the truth, was as great at least, as that shown by 
the primitive christians for its propagation. But 
they proceeded in a very different manner. 

At first some circumspection was necessary. 
The more eflectually to destroy the christian reli- 
gion altogether, they began by sapping the foun- 
dations of the catholic faith, the only one that 
the people had been taught to revere. They form- 
ed a schism with the church of Rome, well know- 
ing that the opinions of the vulgar, once set afloat, 
were as likely to fix on atheism as on any other 
system ; and more so, as being less opposed to 
their levelling principles than the rigid though 
simple morality of the gospel. A religion that 
teaches obedience to the higher powers, inculcates 
humility and peace, strictly forbids robbery and 
murder, and, in short, enjoins on men to do as 
they would be done unto, could by no means suit 
the armed ruffians, who were to accomplish the 
views of the French Assembly. 



14^ 

The press, which was made free for the worst 
of purposes, lent most powerful aid to these de- 
structive reformers. While the catholic religion 
was ridiculed and abused, no other christian sys- 
tem was proposed in its stead; on the contrary, 
the profligate wretches who conducted the public 
prints, among whom were Mirabeau, Marat, Coh- 
dorcet and Hebert, filled one half of their impi- 
ous sheets with whatever could be thought of to 
degrade all religion in general. The ministers of 
divine worship, of every sect and denomination, 
were represented as cheats, and as the avowed 
enemies of the sublime and sentimental something, 
which the Assembly had in store for the regene- 
ration of the world. 

Most of my readers must have heard of the 
magnificent church of St. Genvieve, at Paris. It 
was one of the most noble structures that the 
world had ever seen, and had besides the honour 
of being consecrated to the worship of Christ. 
This edifice the blasphemers seized on as a re- 
ceptacle for the remains of their ''great men,^^ 
From a christian church, they changed it into a 
pagan temple, and gave it the name of Pantheon, 
Condorcet, pre-eminent in infamy, proposed the 
decree, by which the name of God and that of 
St. Genvieve, were ordered to be effaced from the 
frontispiece. 

To this Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire were 
first transported, and the Assembly spent no less 
than three days in determining whether those of 



143 

Rousseau should not accompany them. This dis- 
tinction paid to two of the most celebrated deists 
of the age, was a full declaration of the principles 
as well as the intentions of the majority of the 
Assembly. 

Those who have not had the patience to wade 
through the lies and blasphemies of Voltaire, know 
his principles from report. Rousseau is not so 
well known ; and, as he was, and still continues 
to be, the great oracle of the revolutionists, I am 
persuaded a page or two on his character, and 
that of his works, will not be lost here ; parti- 
cularly as I have heard both mentioned with ap- 
plause in this country, by persons apparently of 
the best intentions. 

The philosopher, Rousseau, the pagod of the 
regenerated French, was born at Geneva ;* and, 
at a proper age, bound an apprentice to an artist. 
During his apprenticeship he frequently robbed his 
master as well as other persons. Before his time 
w as expired he decamped, fled into the dominions 
of the king of Sardinia, where he changed the 
presbyterian for the catholic religion. This be- 
ginning seemed to promise fair for what followed. 
By an unexpected turn of fortune he became a 
footman, in which capacity he did not forget his 
old habit of stealing. He is detected with the 
stolen goods ; swears they were given him by a 

* It is a fact, as singular as true, that this little pitiful Republic 
has produced more infamous and dangerous characters than any 
Empire in the world. 



144 

maid servant of the house ; the girl is confronted 
with him, she denies the fact, and weeping, presses 
him to confess the truth ; but the young philoso- 
pher still persists in the lie, and the poor girl is 
driven from her place in disgrace. — Tired of be- 
ing a serving-man, he went to throw himself on 
the protection of a lady, whom he had seen once 
before, and who he protests was the most virtuous 
creature of her sex. This lady had so great a re- 
gard for him, that she called him her little dar- 
ling, and he called her mamma. Mamma had a foot- 
man, who served her, besides, in another capacity, 
very much resembling that of a husband ; but she 
had a most tender affection for her adopted son 
Rousseau, and, as she feared he was forming con- 
nections with a certain lady that might spoil his 
morals, she herself, out of pure virtue, took him 
— to bed with her ! — This virtuous effort to pre- 
serve the purity of Rousseau's heart, had a dread- 
ful effect on the head of the poor footman, and so 
he poisoned himself. — Rousseau fell sick, and 
mamma was obliged to part with her little darling, 
while he performed a journey to the south of 
France, for the recovery of his health. On the 
road he dines with a gentleman, and lies with his 
wife. As he was returning back, he debated with 
himself whether he should pay this lady a second 
visit or not ; but, fearing he might be tempted to 
seduce her daughter also, virtue got the better, 
and determined the little darling to fly home into 
the arms of his mamma; but, alas! those arms were 
filled with another. Mammals virtue had prompted 
Jier to take a substitute, whom she liked too well 



145 

to part with, and our philosopher was obliged to 
shift for himself. 

I should have told the reader, that the little 
darling, while he resided with his mamma, went 
to make a tour with a young musician. Their 
friendship was warm, like that of most young 
men, and they were, besides, enjoined to take 
particular care of each other during their travels. 
They travelled on for some time, agreed perfectly 
well, and vowed an everlasting friendship for 
each other. But, the musician, being one day 
taken in a fit, fell down in the street, which fur- 
nished the faithful Rousseau with an opportunity 
of slipping off with some of his things, and leav- 
ing him to the mercy of the people, in a town 
where he was a total stranger. 

We seldom meet with so much villainy in a 
youth. His manhood was worthy of it. He 
turned apostate a second time, was driven from 
within the walls of his native city of Geneva, as 
an incendiary, and an apostle of anarchy and infi- 
delity ; nor did he forget how to thieve. — At last 
the philosopher marries ; but like a philosopher ; 
that is, without going to church. He has a fami^ 
ly of children, and, like a kind philosophical fa- 
ther, for fear they should want after his death, he 
sends them to the poor-house during his life-time! 
To conclude, the philosopher dies, and leaves the 
philosopheress, his wife, to the protection of a 
friend ; she marries a footman, and gets turned 
out into the street. 

N 



146 

This is a brief sketch of the life of Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, the oracle of the regenerated French, a 
thief, a whoremaster, an adulterer, a treacherous 
friend, an unnatural father, and twice an apos- 
tate. — There wants only about a hundred murders 
to make him equal to the immortal Marat, whom 
we have seen compared to Jesus Christ. This vile 
wretch had the impudence to say, in the work that 
contains a confession of these, his crimes, that no 
man can come to the throne of God, and say, / am 
a better man than Rousseau, 

His writings, though they have very great lite- 
rary merit, contain such principles as might be ex- 
pected from such a man. He has exhausted all 
the powers of his fascinating eloquence in the 
cause of anarchy and irreligion. And his writings 
are so much the more dangerous, as he winds him- 
self into favour with the unwary, by an eternal 
cant about virtue and liberty. He seems to have 
assumed the mask of virtue for no other purpose 
than that of propagating, with more certain suc- 
cess, the blackest and most incorrigible vice.* 

* Two philosophers can seldom agree more than two per-r 
sons of any other profession ; so it happened with Voltaire and 
Roi'sseau. The humorous prophetic critic of Rousseau's 
romance, the New Eioisa^ is so well worthy of a place here, 
that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of translating an extract 
or two from it. 

" In those days there will appear in France a wonderful man. 
He will say unto the people, Behold ! I am possessed by the 
demon of enthusiasm; I have received from heaven the gift of 
paradoxical inconsistency ; and the hght-heeled muhitude will 
dance after him and many will adore him. And he will say, 



147 

This was the man and the writer that the Consti- 
tuent Assembly held up to the imitation and even 
adoration of the poor deluded French people. The 
ashes of this thieving philosopher cost the nation 
almost two thousand guineas in debates. 

Those who know what power novelty has on 
the French ; with what enthusiasm, or rather 
fury, they adopt whatever is in vogue, may guess 
at the effect that this philosophical canonization of 
Rousseau produced. Every thing was a la Rous- 
seau ; his works were hawked about, mouthed in 
the National Assembly, (often by those who un- 
derstood them not,) recommended in all the prints, 
and spouted at the sans-culotte clubs. His old 
boorish sayings became the liveliest traits of wit, 

you are all rascals and prostitutes, and I detest rascals and pros- 
titutes, and I come to live amongst you. And he will add, the 
men and women are all jyirtuous in the republic of Geneva^ 
where I was born, and I love virtuous men and won»en, and I 
will not live in the country where I v^s born. — He will protest 
that the play-house is a school of prostitution and corruption, 
and he will write operas and plays. — He v/ill advise mankind 
to go stark naked, and he will wear laced clothes, when given 
unto him. — He will swear that romances corrupt the morals of 
all who read thern, and he will compose a romance ; and 
in this romance will be seen vice in deeds and virtue in words, 
and the lovers will be mad with love and with philosophy ; and 
this romance will teach how to seduce a young girl philosophi- 
cally ; and the disciple will lose all shame and modesty : and 
she will practise foolishness and raise maxims and paradoxes 
with her master ; and she will kiss first, and ask him to lie with 
her and she will become round and pregnant with metaphysics. 
And this they will call philosophy and virtue, and they will 
talk about philosophy and virtue, till no soul on earth knows 
what philosophy and virtue is." 



148 

all his manners were imitated ; to be crusty and 
ill-bred, was like Jean Jaques, and, what was 
particularly offensive to every just mind, his 
loathsome, down-looking portrait, that portrait 
which seems to be the chosen seat of guilt, was 
seen at every corner, and in every hand. 

Having thus prepared the public mind, the As- 
sembly made a bold attack on the church. They 
discovered, by the light of philosophy, that France 
contained too many churches, and, of course, too 
many pastors. Great part of them were, there- 
fore, to be suppressed ; and to make the innova- 
tion go down with the people, all tithes were to 
be abolished. The measure succeeded ; but what 
did the people gain by the abolition of the tithes ? 
not a farthing ; for a tax of twenty per cent, was 
immediately laid on the lands in consequence of 
it. The cheat was not perceived till it was too 
late. 

But, the abolition of the tithes, the only motive 
ef which was to debase the clergy in the opinions 
of the people, was but a trifle to what was to fol- 
low. The religious orders, that is to say, the 
communities of monks and nuns, possessed im- 
mense landed estates, and these the honest As- 
sembly had marked for their own. As a pretext 
for their seizure, they first decreed, that the wealth 
of the religious orders belonged to the nation^ to 
that indefinite being that exists every where and 
no where, and that has devoured all, without re- 
ceiving any thing. 



149 

As this act of seizing the estates of the regu- 
lar clergy, was one of those that gave a decisive 
blow to property as well as religion in France, 
and one that has received the greatest applauses 
in this country, I shall enter a little at length into 
the flagrant injustice of it. Nor is the subject 
inapplicable to ourselves ; for, though there are 
no religious orders in America, there are many 
people of property, and it is of a violation of 
property that I here charge the Assembly. 

How the estates of the religious orders became 
tlie property of a certain somebody called the 
nation, in 1791, is to me wholly inconceivable; 
seeing that there never was a time, when they 
belonged to that society of men, now called the 
French. Great part of the monasteries had been 
founded five, six, seven hundred years, and some 
above a thousand years before the most worthless 
of the French took it into their heads to be so 
many sovereigns. The founders were men of 
pious and austere lives, who, wishing to retire 
from the world, obtained grants of uncultivated 
land, generally in some barren and solitary spot. 
There they formed little miserable settlements, 
which, by their frugality and labour, in time be- 
came rich meadows, farms, and vineyards. A 
French historian, speaking of St. Etienne, says : 
** In 1058, he retired to Citeaux, then a vast for- 
est, inhabited only by wild beasts. Here, with 
the help of his followers, he built a monastery of 
the wood of the forest ; but, at first, it was no 
more than a group of shabby huts. Every thing 

n2 



^ 150 

bore the marks of extreme poverty : the cross was 
of wood, the censers of copper, and the candle- 
sticks of iron. All the ornaments were of coarse 
woolen or linen. Labour was the only means of 
subsistence with the monks of Citeaux. For 
many years, bread was their only food, and they 
were often reduced to a scarcity of even that." 

In time this forest became a cultivated and 
flourishing estate, and the successors of the first 
proprietors were not only at their ease, but even 
rich. The monastery, which was, at first, but a 
clump of ill-shaped huts, built with the limbs of 
trees, bark and turf, was become a magnificent pile. 
The church was beautiful beyond description. In- 
stead of wood and copper and iron, the symbols of 
religion and the sacred vases were now of gold, 
silver and precious stones. This abbey, at the 
time of the seizure by the Constituent Assembly, 
had an annual revenue of 120,000 French livres, 
or, about 6,000 pounds sterling. 

Now, I ask any honest man ; was this the 
property of the French nation or not ? By what 
rule of right, by what principle of law or justice, 
could this estate belong to any other than the laio- 
ful successors of the first proprietors ; that is to 
say, the possessors at the epoch of the seizure ? 
No title ever framed by man could be so good as 
theirs. The community at Citeaux had never 
ceased to exist, nor for a single monient ceased to 
keep possession of their abbey and its dependen- 
cies. They had first obtained a lawful gra^t of 



151 

the land, had cleared, cultivated, and enriched it; 
and had enjoyed an uninterrupted possession dur- 
ing the space of seven hundred and thirty-two 
years ? but, at the end of the enlightened eigh- 
teenth century, the Age of Reason^ up starts a 
horde of lazy, worthless ruffians, calling them- 
selves the nation, and lay claim to their estates ! 

Bulteau, in speaking of St. Benedict, says : 
" The bodily labour ordered by this wise founder, 
was a source of peace and tranquility to the first 
monks, and of opulence io their successors. The 
monasteries were long an asylum to those chris- 
tians, who had fled from the oppressions of the 
Goths and Vandals. The little learning that re- 
mained in the barbarous and dark ages, was pre- 
served in the cloisters. It is to them we owe all 
the most precious remains of antiquity, as well as 
many modern inventions." — Indeed, under the 
great disposer of al] events, it is to them we owe 
that we are christians ; that we possess the word 
of God, our guide to eternal life. They not only 
preserved this inestimable volume, but spread it 
in every country in the world. Without their 
agency, our ancestors might have' continued pa- 
gans ; nay, we, ourselves, perhaps, might now 
have been sacrificing our children in the hollow 
of a Wicker-Idol. — Every man of any reading 
knows, that the" monasteries have continued to 
enrich the world with learned and useful produc- 
tions. Some of the writings that do the greatest 
honour to the French nation, and to the human 
mind, have issued from the cloister. And jet, 



152 

we have seen these men robbed of their estates, 
stripped of even their furniture and their vest- 
ments, driven Irom beneath their roofs, hunted 
like wild beasts, and, what I am ashamed to say, 
many of us have had the folly, or rather baseness, 
to applaud their unprincipled and blood-thirsty 
pursuers.* 

We are told that the monks were become too 
rich. Indeed this was their great offence in the 
eyes of the Assembly, whose motto was : ''War 
to the rich and peace to the cottager." But we 
have seen that the foundation of these riches was 
laid by the labour of their predecessors, and we 

* I cannot kelp observing here, that these unjust and inhuman 
applauders have not always been confined to the mob. An 
*^ Oration on the Progress of Reason,^^ delivered at a Public 
Commencement in the university of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
on the 18th of July, 1^92, contains a philippic against the in- 
jured French monarch and clergy, the most illiberal that ever 
disgraced the lips of a petulant self-sufficient pedant. The 
Orator discovers but little knowledge of any branch of his sub- 
ject, and more particularly of the character of Louis XVI. of 
that of the French clergy, and of the nature of the old govern- 
ment j against all which he runs on in a strain of invective, 
more resembling the brutal abusiveness of Calvin, than any 
thing we ought to expect to hear from the chair of a seminary, 
at the close of the " enlightened eighteenth century." — Like 
many others, this Orator looked upon the Prench Revolution 
as happily terminated ; as the dawn of universal peace, liberty, 
and virtue : he has since had time to see his error, to see the 
effects of his " Progress of Reason," some of which I have 
related in the former part of this volume j if he be candid, 
therefore, he will publicly retract this error. If he should not 
do this, I shall take the liberty, one of these days, of convin- 
cing him that he has erred. 



153 

may observe that they were augmented, not by 
oppression, as has been falsely asserted, but by a 
prudent management of their estates. Those 
communities that cultivated their own lands, 
were noted for the excellent manner of their cul- 
tivation, and for the superior quality of their pro- 
duce ; and those that rented out their farms, let 
them at a low rate, so as to enable the farmer to 
enrich the land at the same time that he enriched 
himself. It was by such means that their estates 
became the most valuable in the country, a cir- 
cumstance that poor shallow-headed Paine has 
brought against them as a heinous offence. They 
were gentle humane masters and landlords ; a 
man looked upon his fortune as made, when he 
became the tenant of a religious order. 

And how were these riches spent ? Not in 
horses and coaches ; people shut up in a cloister 
had no use for these. Not in balls and plays: 
for there they could never appear. Not in rich 
attire and costly repasts ; for the greatest part of 
them were clothed worse than common beggars, 
and were forbidden the use of meat, and even of 
wine, the common drink of their country. Their 
riches did not go to aggrandize their families ; 
because, as no individual could possess any thing, 
so he could bequeath or dispose of nothing. Who 
then, profitted from these riches ? Go ask the poor, 
who were happy in the neighbourhood of their 
convents. Go ask the aged, the infirm, the widow 
and the orphan. And, ask them, too, what aid 



154 

and consolation they have received from the 
thieving philosophers of the Revolution. 

This charge of being too rich, is the most ab- 
surd as well as the most vile that could possibly 
be invented. Do we say to a man, who has ac- 
quired an immense fortune by the labour of his 
father, or by any other means ; you are too rich, 
and therefore your property belongs to the na- 
tion ! — There is a community at Bethlehem, very 
much resembling those we have here been speaking 
of. What should we think of a scoundrel legislator, 
who should propose to strip these people of their 
property, and turn them out to beg their bread, 
merely" because the value of their lands is increas- 
ed ? Such was he who first proposed the seizure 
of the church lands in France. 

Some of the Convents in France had been 
founded by lay persons, upon such and such con- 
ditions ; and, in case of failure on the part of 
the community, the property was to revert to the 
heirs of the donor. Foundations of this kind 
were exactly resembling those we frequently see 
among us, of hospitals, seminaries, &c. and the 
deeds were still in existence at the time of the 
seizure ; but an Assembly that paid no respect to 
a right of prescription, founded on a thousand 
jears of uninterrupted possession, could not be 
expected to pay attention to the contents of a bit 
of old parchment. 

We ought not to be astonished at hearing the 



155 

author of the Age of Reason, attempt to justify 
this act of impudent fraud ; but let us see how his 
doctrine would suit, if applied to ourselves ; for 
this is the only way to determine on its merits. 
Suppose (which God forbid!) the principles of the 
French Revolution should be adopted by our fiC- 
gislature, and they should declare all the meeting 
houses, seminaries, hospitals, &c. together with 
the estates which have been left for their support, 
the property of the nation, how should we receive 
this ? Suppose an army of cut-throats should be 
sent to the Friend's meeting-house and thrust 
them out with the points of their bayonets ; sup- 
pose another should go to the Episcopal church, 
drive the congregation from the altar, strip the 
minister of his cassoc, seize on the sacramental 
cup, and turn the church into a stable ? I ask, how 
should we like this ? — But, we are told, there is a 
vast difference ; that the monks were superstitious 
drones, useless to society. — Ah ! let us beware. 
Let us take care not to condemn, because we are 
protestants, a religion that differs from our own 
in form only ; a religion that has yet more votaries 
than any other christian profession can boast of. 
And, as to the religious orders being useless to 
society, we have no proofs of this, but strong pre- 
sumptive ones of the contrary ; for, we know, 
that France was great and happy, that it had been 
increasing in extent, wealth and population, since 
the existence of these communities. However, I 
by no means take upon me to prove the public 
utility of the monastic life ; nor is it necessary ; 
for, if no man is to possess property, unless he 



156 

can prove his untility to society, I am afraid that 
few of us would be secure. How many hundreds 
of proprietors do we see, who are much worse 
than useless to society ! Surely the public is as 
much benefitted by a man who spends his life in a- 
convent, as by one who spends it in a tavern, at a 
billiard-table, or in a play-house. ' Thousands and 
thousands there are who never worked a stroke, 
nor studied a single hour; vegetating mortals, 
who seem to live only to eat and drink, and be 
carried about. Yet we have never thought of 
seizing their estates. No : utility or inutility has 
nothing to do with the matter ; the question be- 
fore us is a simple question of right. Whether 
monks were necessary or useful in France, or not, 
we know there were such people, and that they 
possessed property legally acquired ; and every 
honest man, capable of distinguishing between 
right and wrong, will hold in abhorrence the as- 
sembly that dared to rob them of it. 

When we hear of such crying acts of injustice 
as this, we are naturally led to inquire who were 
the first promoters of them. The reader will be 
astonished to hear, that the decrees for this nation- 
al robbery was first proposed by a bishop. Of a 
hundred and thirty -eight French bishops, there 
were only four to be found, who would give their 
approbation to this deed, and one of these four 
was he who proposed the decree. The Abbe 
Barruel speaks of him in the following terms : — 
" The Assembly thought it high time to consum- 
mate their designs upon the church, by seizing 



15? 

what still remained of its possessions. This mea- 
sure was so evidently contrary to every principle 
of justice and common honesty, that it was not 
easy to find a man so totally lost to every senti- 
ment of humanity, as to bring it forward. This 
second Judas was at last found in the college of 
the apostles. This was Taillerand Perigord, 
bishop of Autun. — The Perigord possessed all the 
baseness, all the vices of a Jew." — See Hist, of 
the French clergy, page 15. 

To obtain the sanction of the people to this act, 
they were told, that the wealth of the church 
would not only pay off the national debt, but ren- 
der taxes in future, unnecessary. No deception 
was ever so barefaced as this ; but even this was 
not wanted ; for the people themselves had alrea- 
dy begun to taste the sweets of plunder. Avarice 
tempted the trading part of the nation to approve 
of the measure. At the time of passing the decree 
they were seen among the first to applaud it. 
They saw an easy means of obtaining those fine 
rich estates, the possession of which, they had, 
perhaps, long coveted. In vain were they told, 
that the purchaser would partake in the infamy of 
the robbery ; that, if the title of the communities 
could not render property secure, that same pro- 
perty could never be secure under any title the 
plunderers could give. In vain were they told, 
that in sanctioning the seizure of the wealth of 
others, they were sanctioning the seizure of their 
own, whenever that all-devouring monster, the 
sovereign people, should call on them for it. In 

O 



158 

vain were they told all this : thej purchased : thej 
saw with pleasure the plundered clergy driven 
from their dwellings ; but scarcely had they taken 
possession of their ill-gotten wealth, when not 
only that, but the remains of their other pro- 
perty, were wrenched from them. Since that we 
have seen decree upon decree launched forth 
against the rich : their account books have been 
submitted to public examination ; they have been 
obliged to give draughts for the funds they pos- 
sessed even in foreign countries ; all their letters 
have been intercepted and read. How many hun- 
dreds of them have we seen led to the scaffold, 
merely because they were proprietors of what 
their sovereign stood in need of ! these were acts 
of unexampled tyranny; but, as they respected 
the persons who applauded the seizure of the 
estates of the church, they were perfectly just. 
Several of these avaricious purch^asers have been 
murdered within the walls of those buildings, 
whence they had assisted to drive the lawful pro- 
prietors : this was just : it was the measure they 
had meted to others. They shared the fate of the 
injured clergy, without sharing the pity which 
that fate excited. When dragged forth to 
slaughter in their turn, they were left without 
even the right of complaining : the last stab of the 
assassin was accompanied with the cutting reflec- 
tion, that it was just. 

I have dwelt the longer on this subject, as it is, 
perhaps, the most striking and most awful ex- 
ample of the consequences of a violation of pro- 



159 ' 

perty, that the world ever saw. Let it serve to 
warn all those who wish to raise their fortunes on 
the ruin of other-s, that, sooner or later their own 
turn must come. From this act of the Constitu- 
ent Assembly, we may date the violation, in 
France, of every right that men ought to hold 
dear. Hence the seizure of all gold and silver as 
the property of the nation : hence the law pre- 
venting the son to claim the wealth of his father : 
hence the abominable tyranny of requisitions ; 
and hence thousands and thousands of the mur- 
ders, that have disgraced unhappy France. 

Since the seizure of the church estates, there 
has not, in fact, been any such thing as private 
property in France ; for, though the Constituent 
Assembly did not pass a decree of this import, 
they knevF perfectly well how to pass decrees and 
establish regulations amounting to the same thing. 
Some of the enormous contributions on the rich, 
were called patriotic gifts ; but he who refused to 
pay the gift inserted in the list, knew he had but 
a few hours to live. The money and jewels de- 
posited at the bar of the Assembly, and on the 
aitar of the country, amounted to immense sums. 
These were held out as a poof of a general appro- 
bation of their measures ; but had the Assembly 
been candid, they would have confessed, that 
these offerings were the pure effect of fear, of a 
panic that had seized all the proprietors in the 
nation, and that each giver's hatred to their cause 
might be measured by the sum he deposited. It 
was not a grateful free-will offering, but a sacri- 



♦ 160 

fice, that the trembling wretch came to offer at 
the shrine of tyranny, in order to save his house 
from the flames, or his own head, or that of some 
dear relation or parent, from the scaffold. Could 
a man, reduced to acts like this, be said to possess. 
any thing ? 

The successors of the Constituent Assembly 
laid aside the mask, as no longer necessary. On 
the 13th of March, 1794, all the merchants of 
Bourdeaux (known for one of the most infamous- 
ly patriotic towns in the kingdom) were arrested 
in one day, and condemned, in presence of the 
guillotine, to a fine of one hundred millions of 
French livres, upwards of four millions sterling. 
On the 18th of April, the rich banker. La Borde, 
after having purchased his life eight times, was 
ojuillotined. and the remainder of his riches con- 
fiscated.* On the 10th of May, twenty- seven 
rich Farmers-General were executed, because 
they had amassed riches under the monarchy. 
Finally, on the 27th of June, all property, of 
whatever description, w^as decreed to belong to 
the nation, and was put in a state of requisition 
accordingly, as the persons of the whole of the 
inhabitants had been before. 

* " Did not Robespierre gratify the Parisian taste, by afford- 
ing a public representation gratis every day, where blood was 
shed, and where the nation had the double enjoyment of con- 
templating the sufferings of the condemned^ and reflecting on 
his forfeited riches, when the ragged sans-culotte, that honoura- 
ble character, exulted in the double enjoyment of national ven- 
geance, and of being one of the heirs of the condemned victim." 

Playfair, page 52 1. 




161 

The milk and water admirers of the Constitu- 
ent Assembly pretend to be shocked at these mea- 
sures ; but, what are these measures more than 
an improvement on those of that Assembly ? The 
progress was not only natural, but even necessary 
to the support of the revolution. Had there been 
still church-estates to seize, and monks to murder, 
it is probable that the tyrants who have succeeded 
the Constituent Assembly, would not have sur- 
passed their predecessors ; but, that source being 
exhausted, they were obliged to find out others, or 
return to order and obedience.* And, I should 
be glad to know, if the property of one individual 
or one society, was become the property of the 
sovereign people by virtue of a decree of one As- 
sembly, why the same claim should not be made to 
the property of other individuals, or other societies. 
Nor can I believe, whatever atheists and deists 
may say to the contrary, that it was any more un- 
just to guillotine bankers and merchants, or even 
members of the Constituent Assembly^ than to 
guillotine or massacre poor, defenceless, friend- 
less priests. There is such an intimate connec- 
tion between the security of property, and that of 
the person to whom that property belongs, that 
one can never be said to be safe, while the other 
is in danger. Tyrant princes, tyrant assemblies, 
or tyrant mobs, when once they are suffered to 

* Robespierre, when told of his severity to the rich, used to 
say : Let me alone ; I am coining money. 

Barrere, in one of his reports to the Convention, estimated 
three strokes of the national die (the guillotine) upon one occa^ 
sioji, at twenty-two millions of livres. 

o 2 



162 

take away with impunity the property of the in- 
nocent man, will feel little scruple at taking away 
his life also. Robbery and murder are the natu- 
ral auxiliaries of each other, and, with a people 
rendered ferocious and hardened by an infidel 
system that removes all fear of a hereafter, they 
must for ever be inseparable. 

Before the decree was passed for the assump- 
tion of the estates of the regular clergy, every 
calumny that falsehood could invent, and every 
vexation that tyranny could enforce, were em- 
ployed to debase the whole body of the clergy 
and the religion they taught. Songs and carica- 
tures were sung, or hawked about, by shameless 
strumpets in the pay of the Assembly. In these 
not only the clerical functions and the lives of the 
clergy were ridiculed, but even the life of Jesus 
Christ and the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation 
of our Saviour became the subject of a farce, in 
the smutty language of Parisian hsh- women. Who 
were the characters in this farce, I leave the shud- 
dering reader to conceive. 

A decree, in form of an invitation,'^ was issued 
for bringing the gold and silver from the churches 
to the mint. It was well known, that there were 

* " Invitations from superiors," says some one, *^ savour 
strongly of commands." This was so much the case in the pre- 
sent instance, that the priest who dared to disobey, was sure to 
expiate his disobedience with his Hfe. The magistrates often 
entered the church, and seized tlie chalices on the altar, during 
the celebration of the mass. Such are revolutionary invitations. 



none of these metals in the churches, except the 
vases, the crucifixes, and other symbols, hitherto 
held sacred. What an effect the coining up of 
these must have on the minds of the giddy mul- 
titude, is not difficult to imagine. Many, how^ 
ever, even of the most depraved, felt a momentary 
horror ; but this horror the Assembly knew how 
to do away. Hundreds, I might say thousands, 
of abandoned scribblers, were employed to propa- 
gate the new principles. Their little filthy ditties 
were spread through all the departments, at the 
expense of the nation. Some of these were cate- 
chisms in rhyme, in which the Constitution was 
substituted for God, the Assembly for the saints, 
and both recommended to the adoration of the 
French patriots. The Journal, or Letter, as it 
was called, of Pere du Chene, written by one 
Hebert, and of which it is said fifty thousand 
copies were struck off daily, was sent into the 
towns and villages by the carriers of the decrees 
of the Assembly. This Hebert, whose strumpet 
has since been adored at Paris, as the goddess of 
Reason, was a professed atheist; His journal 
contained the most outrageous abuse of all that 
was respectable and sacred, interlarded with oaths 
and execrations without number. I have one now 
before me, which has for title, *' Lettre du verita- 
hie Pere du Chene, hougrement patriotic.'^'' In 
English; "Letter of the true Father du Chene 
b — gerly patriotic." I would here insert an ex- 
tract from this letter ; but, I trust I shall be 
believed, when I say, the contents are fully an- 
swerable to the title. Such were the agents of 



164 

Condorcet and his colleagues : thus did they cor- 
rupt the morals of the people ; thus did they lead 
them from one degree of vice to another ; thus 
were they hardened up to rob and to murder ; and 
thus did the boasted Constituent Assembly lay 
the foundation of all those horrors we have since 
heard of. 

The magistrates in the different municipalities, 
chosen from the scum of the nation, distributed 
these infernal writings among the people in their 
precincts, and particularly among the young peo- 
ple. If, by chance, some magistrate was found, 
too scrupulous to execute their will, means were 
soon invented to get rid of him. Some pretext 
or other was never wanting to excite the mob to 
put an end to him and his resistance. Chatel, 
Mayor of St. Denys, was one of this description. 
The mob were told that this man was the cause 
of the dearness of bread. They flew to his house, 
and obliged him to reduce the price according to 
their will ; though it was well known, that he had 
not the power to reduce it at all unless at his own 
expense. The rabble were dispersing ; but they 
had not fulfilled the bloody wishes of the revolu- 
tionary agents, who had nothing less in view than 
the lowering the price of bread. They were in- 
stigated to return to the unfortunate magistrate. 
First, they attempted to hang him ; but, wearied 
with his resistance, one of them took out his knife, 
and cut his head partly off, while several others 
pricked him with their bayonets. The unhappy 
victim was still alive after the back of his neck 



165 

Was cut asunder, and was heard to groan out : ^'for 
heaven^s sake kill me ! kill me ! you make me 
suffer too long /—The sanguinary villain, who had 
begun to cut his head off, now threw away his 
knife, and borrowed that of his comrade, with 
which he finished the work. When he found that 
his own knife was not sufficient, he said, with a 
cool indifference : ''lend me your knife^for mine 
is not worth a curse."^^ That which was lent him 
was a little two-penny knife with a wooden han- 
dle. — During this time, other assassins gave him 
several stabs, with their knives, in the belly and 
stomach ; one of them turned his knife slowly in 
the flank of the dying man, and said to him, laugh- 
ing : " Does that enter well f Don-t you find the 
day-lighi peep into you .^" — He at last expired, 
after the most inconceivable torments. His body 
was dragged along the streets of St. Denys with 
his head tied to his feet. — A resolution of the 
town has since declared him innocent of any 
offence whatever : he had given abundant assist- 
ance to the poor the winter before : the diminu- 
tion he had j ust made in the price of bread was 
at his own expense ; and this barbarous punish- 
ment was his recompense. His wife went dis- 
tracted, and has ever since been in a mad-house. 
His assassins obtained pardon from the Assembly, 
a circumstance much less surprising, than that 
they should think it necessary to ask it. See dm 
Goii7'^s Memoire, page 67.* 

* See the Appendix, No, VII. 



166 

Examples of this kind, and such were wanting 
in very few parts of the country, could not fail 
to insure an implicit obedience on the part of the 
magistrates. 

The debasement of religion was nearly com- 
pleted by the public sale of the suppressed church- 
es and monasteries. The grossest indecency pre- 
sided at all these demoniac scenes. When the 
vile agent of the Assembly, hammer in hand, 
had exhausted his auctioneer rhetoric, in recom- 
mending a church as an excellent barn, stable, or 
playhouse, it was knocked down to the base and 
avaricious speculator, .while the hireling mob 
shouted applause. The church of St. Aldegon- 
de at St. Omors (1 love to cito instances) the 
highest in that ancient town, and for hundreds 
of years the pride of its inhabitants, was sold to 
a Jew of Dunkirk, for the pitiful sum of 20,000 
French livres in assignats, not more than 200 
pounds sterling ; not half the cost of one of the 
pillars. This beautiful edifice, by the spire of 
which the town was known at a great distance, 
had been chosen for destruction, that the humili- 
ation of religion might be the more striking. It 
met with such treatment as might be expected from 
the hands of an infidel. Its lofty spire was tumbled 
to the earth in less than a month : the body of 
the church was turned into a rope-walk, and the 
Jew proprietor, to complete the degradation of 
Christianity, left a representation of the Lord's 
Supper uneffaced in the chancel. What must be 
the grief, what the indignation of the thinking 



167 

. t . 
and pious part of the inhabitants of St. Omers, 

thus to see their favourite church, the sanctuary 
of their God, and the God of their fathers, de- 
livered, for a bundle of depreciated paper-money, 
into the hands of a descendant of the murderers 
of him, to whose worship it was consecrated ! 

To give the reader a just idea of the ribaldry, 
of the scenes of brutal impiety, exhibited at the 
pillage of the convents, is totally impossible. A 
dozen or two of carts, rattling along with a com- 
missary at their head, followed by an escort of 
ragamuf6ns, decorated with a bit of three colour- 
ed ribbon, and armed with hammers, axes, crow- 
bars, and spades, generally formed the corps for 
such an expedition. Hardly were the doors open- 
ed when the vaults rang with their hammering 
and their oaths. In a few hours the whole was 
gutted. The decorations of the altar, the priest's 
vestments, statues, pictures, books, manuscripts, 
the most precious pieces of antiquity, the pro- 
ductions of long and laborious lives of study, 
were hauled away as so much rubbish. The 
paintings on the doors, walls, ceilings, and other 
fixtures, were effaced or disfigured ; the fury of 
the enlightened ruffians descended even to the 
graves of the deceased fathers. 

At the expulsion of the nuns, the conduct of 
the revolutionists, was, if possible, still more 
swinish and cruel. While the gibing commissary 
pulled aside their veils to examine their faces, 
his blackguard attendants congratulated them on 



168 

the pleasures they v^e going to enjoy in the 
world, and this in a language calculated to raise a 
blush on the cheek of a common street-walker. 
They seemed to enjoy their tears, and even to 
make some sacrifices to augment them. Had 
any one a piece of needle-work which she wished 
to preserve, it was rent to pieces before her face. 
A singing bird that had the* misfortune to have 
been the companion of the solitary hours of its 
mistress, was sure to be taken from her and killed. 
To these dejected and defenceless females, every 
insult and indignity was offered, not forgetting 
the last of which beastly libertines can be guilty. 

In a country where the crucifix was sent to the 
mint ; where churches were put up at auction ; 
where the half-worn cassoc, the surplice, and the 
veil, made part of the assortment of a dealer in 
old clothes, and were exposed to public sale on the 
market-place ; where the ministers of the gospel 
were scoffed at, reviled, and frequently murdered 
with as little ceremony as one would kill a dog; 
where the most daring blasphemies were uttered 
and published and spread through the country, 
not only wdth the permission of its governors, but 
by their direction; in a country where all this 
was practised, religion could not be of long dura- 
tion. Religion, and even the Catholic religion, 
did, however, still subsist in France, at least, in 
form. The Assembly had^ as yet, passed no po- 
sitive decree for its abolition. They had robbed 
the church, had stripped its altars, and degraded 
its ministers ; but still the most pious and active 



169 

of those ministers were^eft in the exercise of 
their functions. The parochial clergy, though 
deprived of the tithes, had a stipend allowed 
them. They yet remained with their parishion- 
ers, many of whom, indeed, nearly all the elderly 
and sober part of them, continued as firmly at- 
tached to their pastors as at any former period. 

Things were not suffered to remain long in this 
state. The Constituent Assembly well knew, 
that they and religion could never exist for any 
length of time in the same country. The paro- 
chial clergy were men of talents and industry. 
They generally decided all the little disputes be- 
tween their parishioners ; to which amicable ca- 
pacity, they often joined that of physician or sur- 
geon ; and these their beneficent services were 
always rendered without fee or reward. Even 
the atheists and deists themselves had repeatedly^ 
acknowledged their virtuous modesty, and the 
great utility they were of to the community at 
large. Such a body of men, immoveably attach- 
ed to the religion they taught, was truly formida- 
ble to the new tyrants. Religion had received a 
severe blow ; but if these men retained their 
cures, it might recover. Nay, what was still 
more dreadful, the monarchy itself might recover 
along with it; and it is not difficult to conceive, 
how an idea like this must haunt the minds of 
the pupils of the savage and impious Diderot, 
who hoped to see "the last of kings strangled 
with the guts of the last of priests." In short, 
the parochial clergy were the only men on earth 

? 



170 

they had now to fear, and these they got rid of 
by a stratagem worthy of an Assembly, the lea- 
ders of which joined to the most hardened wick- 
edness, the profoundest dissimulation. 

They laid aside the Rights of Man, together 
with the famous constitution, from which they 
took the adjunct to their natie, and which we 
have since seen burnt by the hands of the com- 
mon hangman (or rather common guillotiner) in 
that very city of Paris where it had been issued 
amidst the applauses and even adorations of the 
populace. They laid aside the discussion of this 
instrument of short-lived and ridiculous memory, 
to draw up another, which they were pleased to 
call the *' Civil Constitution of the Clergy." 
They were constitution mad, absolutely frantic. 

It might be sufficient to say of this latter con- 
stitution, that it was just as subversive of religion 
as their other constitution was of every principle 
of government and sound policy. They knew 
it to be in direct opposition to the very nature of 
the catholic religion : yet they had the assurance 
to tell the people, that it was not ; they even 
went so far as to protest, that they would live 
and die in the religion of their forefathers, at^he 
very moment when they were taking the surest 
measure in the world for destroying it. They 
were led to this hypocritical declaration, from a 
fear that the body of the people were not yet ripe 
for a total abolition of religion, and, as we shall 
see in the sequel, this fear was not entirely un- 



171 

founded. By persuading the people, that nothing 
was intended against their faith, they had an ad- 
ditional handle against the clergy, by representing 
them as unfriendly to their " Civil Constitution," 
merely because it was necessary to the support of 
the Rights of Man, 

This instrument did not, however, pass into a 
law, without considerable resistance. There were 
yet some honest and virtuous men, even among 
the members of the Constituent Assembly. These 
had remained with them, not to aid in overturn- 
ing the government, and in effecting the dreadful 
revolution that has since rendered the country a 
slaughter-house, but to oppose the destructive 
measures of the philosophers, and, if possible, 
save the sinking state. At the head of these 
was the learned and eloquent Abbe Maury. He 
opposed this "• Civil Constitution," with all the 
powers of reasoning and all the charms of elo- 
quence : but it was casting pearls before swine. 
When was an atheist open to conviction ? The 
decree passed, and was soon after followed by 
another, obliging the clergy to swear to observe 
and maintain the '' Civil Constitution." This 
oath they could not take, without breaking that 
which they had taken at entering into the priest- 
hood ; and that the Assembly had every reason 
to suppose they would not do. Whether they 
did or not, however, the end of their tyrants was 
answered : if they refused, they were to be driven 
from their livings ; if they complied, they must 
be Ipoked upon as apostates, and be deserted by 



172 

all those who were still attached to them. In 
either case, the tottering remains of religion must 
come to the ground. The clergy, and indeed the 
whole nation, and all Europe,' saw the real ob- 
ject of this inhuman and impious decree ; but 
the Assembly, surrounded by their enlightened 
myrmidons, the Parisian mob, bid defiance to 
earth and heaven. 

Generally speaking, the clergy were resolved 
not to take the oath. " Lose no time," said the 
Abbe Maury, " in the delivery of your challenge. 
By shedding our blood you may ingratiate your- 
selves with your constituents. Lose, then, not a 
single moment. Your victims are here ; they 
are ready. To their torments add not that of 
suspense. Why not vote at once for our execu- 
tion, glut your hatred, and quench for a little 
your thirst for blood ? Hasten, I say, while the 
power is in your hands ; for remember, I now- 
foretel, your reign ivill be of short duration,^^* 

* The Abbe Maury was not the only one, who had the cou- 
rage to tell this Assembly what would be the consequences of 
their proceedings. The famous Raynal wrote to them in 1791, 
and concluded his letter, as near as I can recollect, in the fol- 
lowing words : 

" The consequence of these wild decrees will be, a continual 
struggle between the king and the Assembly ; if the former tri- 
umphs, he will be a despot ; if the latter triumphs, the king 
will die on a scaffold : hence a regent ioithout and a 7ninor 
ivithin, dreadful civil war or more dreadful anarchy y the end of 
which no man living, perhaps, will ever see." 

This was in 1791. The philosophers laughed at the old 
Abbe. They called him a fool and a dotard. 



173 

This prophetic address, which we have seen 
so fully verified, served only to inflame. Eight 
days only were given the clergy to determine on 
compliance or refusal ; during which, no strata- 
gem that base and degenerate tyranny could de* 
vise, was left unessayed to intimidate them. This 
was ever their practice, when they had an im- 
portant blow to strike. Rochefoucauld, formerly 
a duke, declared at the time the decree for the 
seizure of the monasteries was under deliberation, 
that ^'the lives of the bishops and priests^ in the 
Assembly^ depended upon the passing of it ;" and, 
in order to silence all those who opposed it, a list 
of their names was stuck upon the walls, with a 
promise of a reward of " twelve hundred livres 
to any patriot, who icould assassinate them,^^ 
According to this laudable custom, this instance 
of French liberty, when the day for taking the 
oath, or, as it was well termed, ** the for-swear- 
ing day" arrived, the Assembly took care to call 
in the aid of the fish- women and mob. " To the 
lamp-post with the non-juring bishops and priestsP^ 
was echoed from the streets and the galleries. 
The ruffians were prepared for murder, and were 
howling for their prey, like so many wolves 
round a sheep fold. 

Let the reader imagine himself in the situation 
of one of these unfortunate clergymen : an oath 
of apostacy before him, and a halter behind his 
back, and then let him give me his opinion of the 
rights of man, 

p 2 



174 

This did not intimidate the clergy, only thirty 
of whom could be prevailed on to submit, and 
these were already known to have abandoned 
their religion. When the oath was tendered to 
the bishop of Agen : " Gentlemen," says he, " I 
lament not the loss of my fortune ; but there is 
another loss which I should ever lament ; the loss 
of your esteem and my faith. I could not fail to 
lose both, if I took the oath now proposed to 
me." The old bishop of Poitiers, fearing he 
might lose so fair an opportunity of bearing testi- 
mony of his sincerity, advanced to the tribune, 
and calling on the president to command silence, 
" Gentlemen," said he, " I am seventy years old ; 
I have been thirty years a bishop : I will never 
disgrace my gray hairs by an oath of apostacy." 
Upon this manly declaration of the reverend old 
prelate, the clergy rose from their seats, thanked 
him for his example, and told the Assembly he 
had expressed their unanimous sentiments. 

Not being a Roman Catholic, I hope 1 shall be 
excused, when I freely declare, that I much ques- 
tion, whether the ministers of any protestant com- 
munion, in a moment so terrible, surrounded with 
assassins and without a single friend, would have 
shown such a noble intrepidity. " They have 
lost their money," said the profligate Mirabeau 
on this occasion, " but they have saved thein ho- 
nour. "^"^^ And, if this was the case, what had the 

* Doctor Priestly (Fast Sermon of 1794, page 46,) says : 
" When Twas myself in France, in 1774, 1 saw sufficient rea- 
son to believe, that Aar«?Zy any person of eminence , in church 



175 

Assembly done ? If, to preserve honour, it was 
necessary to refuse an obedience to their decrees, 
what sort of decrees must those be ? 

or state^ and especially in the least degree eminent in pkiloso- 
pliy, or literature, was a believer in Christianity ; and no person 
will suppose, that there has been any change in favour of Chris- 
tianity i/i the last twenty yearsP — The doctor will allow, I 
suppose, that bishops are " persons of eminence in the church ;" 
if he does, it will appear, that he knew but very little of those of 
the French church, and that he formed a very rash opinion (to 
say the best of it) concerning their belief in Christianity ; for, of 
one hundred and thirty-eight bishops, only four, namely, 
Taillerand, Brienne, Jarante, and Gobet, took the oath of 
apostacy. But, he will say, I meant, " those eminent in jphilo- 
sop Ay and literature." Ah! eminent m philosophy ! here he 
is right. No, no ; not one of the philosophical divines believ- 
ed in Christianity ; they looked upon Christ, as the Unitarians 
do ; that is, as a sort of " teacher :" but, to the honour of the 
French bishops, there were but four of these philosophers 
amongst them. As to the other hundred and thirty-four, if 
they have not given a proof of their belief, I should be glad to 
know from the doctor, what proof he will please to be satisfied 
with. Their refusal to take the oath could be dictated by no- 
thing but their belief in Christianity, and their determination not 
to dishonour it. Had not this been the case, they would have 
taken the oath, and preserved their fortunes. They were in a 
country where the mob do not, like those of Birmingham, con- 
tent themselves with the execution of an effigy ; they execute 
the person. Yet they remained at their post : they did not de- 
camp in disguise. Even if they escaped the knives of the cut- 
throats, they knew that poverty, beggary, a lingering existence, 
must be the price of their refusal. They could not bring an 
action against the city of Paris : no damages are granted by 
a jury in that country. They could not preach and prate 
against their government, with impunity! they could not 
transfer their property, and emigrate in open day. There 
are such things as national guards, municipalities, passports, 
halters, daggers, knives, drowning boats, and the rights ofman^ 
in France. We have since seen several of these bishops, or 
men " of eminence in the church," refuse, with the bloody 



176 

The Assembly were disconcerted by this firm 
resistance on the part of the clergy. They knew 
the clergy in general would never take the oath, 
but they did not imagine that those amongst them- 
selves, would, amidst the vociferations of their 
cannibals, have the courage to give such a posi- 
tive denial. For a moment they felt abashed : but 
they were gone too far to think of retreating. The 
apostate Abbe Gregoire, whom we have since 
seen amongst the organizers of a pagan festival, 
was, on this occasion, chosen to convince the cler- 
gy, that the oath might be taken, without any vio- 
lation of their faith. After this, in order to de- 
prive the clergy of an opportunity of defending 
their opinions in opposition to the oath, they were 
ordered to advance and take it at once. This de- 
cree had no effect, not a man advanced. Now 
the matter was brought to a point : the decree for 
enforcing the oath must be repealed, or the clergy 
must be driven from their livings, and those in 
the Assembly from their seats. It is hardly ne- 
cessary to say that the latter was adopted : one 
tyrannical measure is the natural and inevitable 
consequence of another. 

poignard at their breasts, to take this oath. Would they have 
done this, had they been what doctor Priestley has represented 
them to be ? would they have done this, had they been atheists, 
or deists ? nay, would they have done this, had they been Uni' 
tarians? If we are to judge from the conduct of the doctor, 
they would not. I will not take upon me to say, that the phi- 
losophical political divine meant to propagate an atrocious ca- 
lumny by this sermon of his : I shall only observe, that the ser- 
mon was preached long after the French bishops had given 
these undeniable proofs of their faith and sincerity.- 



177 

A decree was now passed for the expulsion of 
all the non-juring bishops and priests, and for the 
choosing of others in their stead. From this day, 
it may be said, there was no such thing as an es- 
tablished religion in France. The axe had long 
been laid to the root of the tree ; it was ready to 
fall, and this stroke levelled it with the earth. 

Had the dispute been about this or that tenet ; 
had the oath been imposed with an intention of 
exchanging one religion for another, the case would 
have been different ; the expulsion might have ta- 
ken place without any very considerable injury to 
the morals of the people. But, the struggle was 
that of religion against irreligion, that of Chris- 
tianity against atheism. 

It was (I hope it is so no longer) the opinion 
of Doctor Priestley, and many othev philosophical 
divines, that any change whatever was preferable 
to the continuation of the catholic religion in 
France. There is a passage in Moor's journal, 
which contains so complete an answer to every 
thing these gentlemen have advanced on this sub- 
ject, that I am surprised, considering the prin- 
ciples of the journalist and his companion Lau- 
derdale, that it ever found a place in that volume. 

The Doctor, being at Abbeville, met with a 
protestant clergyman, whom he congratulated on 
the deliverance of himself and his brethren, from 
the vexation of Romish persecution. The clergy- 
man seemed to lament that along with the spirit 



178 

of persecution, that of religion daily diminished. 
" Upon which," says the Doctor, *' I observed 
that, as nothing could be more opposite to true 
religion than a spirit of persecution, the former, 
it was to be hoped, would return without the lat- 
ter ; but, in the mean time, the protestants were 
happy in not only being tolerated in the exercise 
of their religion, but also on being rendered capa- 
ble of enjoying every privilege and advantage 
which the catholics themselves enjoy. 

" We are not allowed those advantages, re- 
sumed the clergyman, from any regard they bear 
to our religion, but from a total indifference for 
their own. 

" Whaterer may be the case, replied I, the 
effect is the same with regard to you. 

*' No, said he, the effect might be better, not 
only with respect to us, but to all France ; for 
the spirit of persecution might have disappeared, 
without an indifference for all religion coming in 
its place : and in that case there would have 
been more probability of the true religion gaining 
ground ; for it is easier to draw men from an 
erroneous doctrine to a true one, than to impress 
the truths of religion on minds which despise all 
religion whatever. 

" But, although you may not be able to make 
converts of them, I replied, still you may live 
happy among them, in the quiet possession of 
your own religion and all your other advantages. 



179 

" I doubt it much, resumed he ; being persuad- 
ed that, in a country where religious sentiments 
are effaced from the minds of the bulk of the peo- 
ple, crimes of the deepest guilt will prevail in 
spite of all the restraints of law." 

How fully, alas ! has the opinion of this good 
clergyman been confirmed ! here we see a man 
living upon the spot, a Frenchman and a Protest- 
ant, lamenting the decay of the catholic religion, 
and trembling for the consequences. This man 
plainly perceived the drift of the philosophical 
legislators : he saw that the destruction of all re- 
ligion was their object, while they pretended to 
be correcting its abuses. Very far was he from 
saying, with our zealous reformers, that "any 
change was preferable to the continuation of 
popery," and yet, I think, we ought to allow him 
to be as much interested in a change, and as 
good a judge of its conveniences and inconveni- 
ences, as persons on this side the sea ; except, 
indeed, that he might not be enlightened by the 
rays of modern philosophy.* 



* Some of the French Protestants, however, difiered widely 
from this good man. The Caivinists of Nimes began massa- 
creing the Catholics at an early period of the revolution, under 
the pretext that they were aristocrats. About six hundred 
persons, of both sexes and of all ages, were butchered in their 
houses, in the streets and pul3lic squares, before they could even 
suspect their danger. These monsters attacked the convent of 
the Capuchins, forced it open, and pursued the venerable fathers 
to their dormitories and cells. Five of them were left welter- 
ing in their blood at the altar's foot. One of these, a very old 
man, craved five minutes while he committed his soul to God, 



180 

From this disgression we must return to the 
expulsed clergy. The parish priests generally 
followed the example of their bishops in refusing 
to take the oath. Others were, of course, ap- 
pointed to replace them. Taillerand Perigorde, 
whom we have seen proposing the assumption of 
the church-estates, was now become a sort of 
pope to the modern church, and was busily em- 
ployed, laying unholy hands on the heads of the 
new bishops. Gobet, one of the four bishops 
who had forsworn themselves, was rewarded for 
his apostacy by the bishopric of Paris. Vaga- 
bond philosophical abbes, who had never been 
able to obtain admittance into the priesthood un- 
der the old government, were now not only ac- 
cepted, but sought after. To these were added 
the secular priests and monks who had apostatized. 
Even the wretches who had been expulsed from 
their cures, or orders, for irregular or criminal 
conduct, were now called in from Germany and 
the low countries. What a sight it must be, to 
those who yet preserved some respect for their 

The cool and deliberate villains granted his request. The in- 
tended butcher held a pistol in one hand and a watch in the 
other, and, when the five minutes were expired, shot him 
through the head. See Hist, of the French Clergy, page 71. 
French edition. 

This fact fully proves, that protestants can be as cruel as 
catholics. Let us not, then imagine^ that we are secure from 
events of this kind, merely because the Catholic religion is not 
established here. It was not a zeal for the Calvinistical reli- 
gion that led the protestants of Nimes to commit these acts of 
barbarity : their knives were pointed, not against catholics, as 
stich, but as aristocrats. 



181 

religion and their country, to see these strollers, 
with their strumpets at their heels, returning to 
take on them the care of the morals and souls of 
a numerous people ! After all, the number of 
apostates was insufficient : a great many parishes 
remained without any priest at all. 

The installment of the new priests was com- 
monly, not to say always, attended with tumult 
and violence. Many of their predecessors were 
knocked down, stabbed, or shot, at their church 
doors, the day, or day after, they had refused to 
conform. The priest of the village of Spet-Saux, 
while he was explaining to his parishioners his 
reasons for refusing to take the oath, received a 
musket ball in his breast, and tumbled dead from 
the pulpit into the aisle. 

Where there was no resistance but on the part 
of the priest, an assassination put an end to the 
struggle ; but, in some places, the resistance was 
more general. The parishoners were divided ; 
one part were the champions of the apostate, and 
the other, those of the old priest. Church time 
was the moment for deciding these disputes, and 
the Church-yard the field of action. These af- 
frays were often bloody ; victory sometimes lean- 
ed to the side of justice ; but, as the apostate 
appeared in person at the head of his troops, as 
he had the young people generally on his side, 
and always the mob and municipal officers, with 
their national guards, he seldom failed to keep 
the field. Some of these wretches have been 

Q 



182 

seen conducted to the altar to the sound of drums 
and trumpets, at the very moment when their 
partizans were murdering on the outside of the 
Church. 

The expelling of the parochial clergy tried the 
"real sentiments of the body of the French peo- I 
pie more than any one act of their tyrants ever 
did, before or since. Generally speaking, the 
trial was honourable to them ; for, if we except 
Paris, and some other places immediately under 
the influence of the revolutionary clubs, they | 
wished to retain their ancient pastors, and did 
not scruple to declare that wish, notwithstanding 
the vociferations of hundreds of mobs in the pay 
of the Assembly ; notwithstanding all these petty 
assemblies of subaltern tyrants, called municipal 
officers, who came to order them to receive an 
apostate, ifi the name of the law ; notwithstand- 
ing thousands of spies and assassins, ever ready 
to betray and murder them ; in spite of all these, 
whole parishes flocked round their priests, pressed 
them to continue, followed them to the fields, and 
left the apostates to say mass to the bare walls. 
Many of the latter, though they continued, to re- 
ceive the revolutionary salary for upwards of two 
years, never could boast of above three or four 
voluntary hearers. 

Wherever this obstinate attachment to religion 
appeared, the Assembly knew how to make the 
refractory feel their authority. True tyrants, 
they suffered no one to thwart their will with 



183 

impunity. Property, honour, conscience, all 
must yield to their sultanic decrees ! 

Condorcet, the atheist Condorcet, proposed 
flagellation ; and this was pretty commonly in- 
flicted on the women and children who assisted 
at the masses of the non-juring clergy. The 
Abbe Barruel (page 79 of the French edition) 
tells us, that three sisters of one of the Charity- 
houses at Paris, expired under the rods of the 
assassins. Ungrateful monsters ! the lives of these 
women had been totally devoted to the service 
of the sick, the lame and the blind. By their 
vow they were excluded from the pleasures of 
the world, without being excluded from its pains. 
They had made a voluntary surrender of all they 
possessed, had assumed the garb, and submitted 
to the austerities of the monastic life, in order to 
devote themselves to the mournful occupation of 
attending on the poor who laboured under infirm- 
ities. It w^as said, they did this to secure them- 
selves a place in heaven ; and most certainly they 
took the surest way. I feel a reluctance to call 
such people superstitious ; for, if they were so, 
their superstition was of the most am^iable kind ; 
and surely nothing short of the principles of this 
hellish revolution could have hardened the hearts 
of men to scourge them to death, and that merely 
because they would not disgrace themselves by 
receiving the sacrament from the contaminated 
hands of an apostate. 

It were endless to enumerate all the different 



184 

sorts of persecution exercised against those who 
remained attached to their religion. Little chil- 
dren were beaten half to death ; the hair and ears 
of women were cut off; thej were mounted on 
asses, and led about in the most unseemly and 
shocking guise. The instance of John Cantabel 
deserves particular notice. Cantabel was an hon- 
est peasant, sincerely attached to the religion of 
his fathers. He happened to have a little cate- 
chism which had been published by the non-ju- 
ring clergy ; it was found in his house ; and this 
was a sufficient crime. A committee of munici- 
pal officers ordered the catechism to be burnt ; 
a great fire was made ; Cantabel was brought 
forth, and commanded to throw the book into it. 
"No," says the heroic peasant, "it contains the 
principles of my religion, it has been my guide and 
my comfort, and it now gives me the courage to 
tell you, that I will never commit it to the flames." 
Upon this he was threatened, but still he remained 
resolute. One of the ruffians seized a flaming 
torch, and held it under his hand. " Burn on," 
said he, "you may burn not only my hand, but 
my whole body, before I will do any thing to dis- 
honour my religion." He was afterwards mount- 
ed on a horse, his back to the head, and the tait 
in his hand, and was thus conducted about amidst 
the shouts of the rabble. The vile wretches, 
when tired with their sport, suffered him to creep 
home, more dead than alive. — This is the liberty of 
conscience in the " Age of Reason /" This is the 
toleration we might expect from atheists, from 
those infidel philosophers, who are continually ex- 



185 

claiming against the prejudices of their forefa- 
thers, and against the sad effects of bigotry and 
religious zeal. In the cant of these enlightened 
reformers, this peasant was a fanatic, an aristo- 
crat, a rebel to the law, and, as such, they will 
tell you that he was worthy of death. 

Notwithstanding the partial opposition the 
apostates met with, and the horror of their con- 
duct, as well as their ministry, excited in all good 
minds, they, at last, found themselves iii posses- 
sion of the churches, to the exclusion of the an- 
cient priests. Such of these latter as had escaped 
death, were now bereft of all means of subsist- 
ence ; they were, therefore, obliged to become a 
charge to their faithful parishioners. Had there 
been any such thing as toleration and liberty 
under the Constituent Assembly, these unfortu- 
nate men might still have found a retreat amongst 
their wealthy neighbours, that would have left 
them no reason to regret the loss of their salaries. 
But the greatest part of their wealthy neighbours 
were already reduced to their own situation, and 
those who were not, knew that the reception of a 
non-juring priest would amount to a proof of 
aristocracy, sufficient to lead them to the guillo- 
tine. The expulsed priests were, then, obliged 
to take shelter in some obscure and miserable 
cabin, and often was the terror so great, that, like 
persons infected with the plague, no one would 
admit them beneath his roof. 

From such a state of miserv and humiliation, 

q2 ' 



186 

some fled in disguise to the countries surrounding 
France ; some to recesses in the forests, whither 
the peasants of the neighbourhood brought them 
the means of existence. Numbers, however, still 
remained in their towns and villages. Seeing the 
whole country swarming with assassins, they 
thought, perhaps, they might as well wait the stab 
in their own parishes, as to seek it at a distance. 
Many, too, from age and infirmity, were abso- 
lutely incapable • of travelling ; and besides, the 
small remainder of a life so full of bitterness, 
could not, with such men, be an object of suffi- 
cient importance to induce them to abandon those 
of their parishioners who still sought their advice 
and consolation.. Some were retained by their 
affection to their relations, or their parents ; it is 
so hard to break the bands of nature, to tear one's 
self from all one holds dear, that the risk of death, 
in competition with such a separation, loses half 
its terrors. 

The ancient priests who remained in their 
parishes, or near them, though often obliged to 
secrete themselves, and though, to appearances, 
generally shunned, were resorted to by great num- 
bers, particularly of the elderly people. 1 have 
already observed, that, among the youth, there 
w;as a pretty general bias towards the apostates. 
Hence ensued such scenes of division and perse- 
cution as no country on earth except France ever 
witnessed. Friends were divided against friends ; 
one branch of a family against another. It often 
happened that the parents treated their children 



187 

as apostates, and the children their parents as 
aristocrats ; quarrels and bloodshed were as often 
the consequences. We have seen (page 35 of 
this volume) a son cut off the heads of his father 
and mother, because they refused to attend at the 
mass of an apostate, carry the heads to his club, 
and receive applauses for the deed. Acts like 
this v^^ere not frequent ; but others, very near ap- 
proaching it, were not only frequent but general. 
Sons, and even daughters, have been known to 
beat and lacerate their parents in the most cruel 
manner. Hundreds of both sexes have been led 
to prison and publicly accused by their children.* 
A man at Faulconberg in Artois, blew his wife's 
brains out with his musket, and left her wallow- 
ing in her blood on the hearth, with seven small 
children crying round her ! 

Can any man, with the common feelings of 
humanity about his heart, contemplate such scenes 
of horror, without execrating the revolution that 
gave rise to them ?t 

* See the Appendix, No. VIII. 

t Many writers Tand aniong others Thomas Paine) have 
remarked, that the French paid great respect, even a sort of 
adoration, to old people : if this was the case, which I am by 
no means inclined to deny, or doubt, what sort of a revolution 
must that be, which has changed this respect and veneration, so 
justly due to old age, into scorn and contempt, into a merciless 
brutality, nay, into parricide ? Solon made no law to punish 
sacrilege or parricide ; because, he observed, " the first was 
as yet unknown in Athens, and the second was so directly 
against all the feelings of nature, that he did not believe it could 
ever be committed.''— Poor Solon did not live in the "€?t- 



188 

The apostate priests failed not to fan the flames 
of discord and division. To ingratiate themselves 
with the young and ignorant, they mixed in all 
their amusements and debauches, treated them at 
their own houses, and instituted civic festivals for 
the mob, with whom they were continually sur- 
rounded. Their masses were sung midst the 
shouts of robbers and murderers, and often inter- 
rupted by the arrival of some innocent conscien- 
tious person dragged into assist at what he looked 
upon as a profanation. Their churches resembled 
guard-houses, rather than places of divine wor- 
ship. In proportion as they perceived themselves 
neglected and despised, their wrath against their 
unshaken predecessors increased. Vexed and 
humiliated to find, that all the respectable part of 
their parishioners took as much pains to avoid them, 
as to seek a communication with their old pastors, 
the whole weight of the vengeance fell on these lat- 
ter. In their existence itself, they saw a memento of 
their own infamy. There is not a species of cruelty, 
that the most obdurate can devise, which they 
left unessayed. They hunted them from their 
retreats, from the houses of their friends, and re- 
lations, from the woods and caverns, even to ex- 
pose them to insult and murder. The infirmities 



lightened eighteenth century," or he would never have talked 
in this way. If he could but rise from the grave, and listen to 
our philosophers, they would not only convince him that such 
actions are possible, but they would tell him they were indis- 
pensably necessary to the establishment of a free republican 
government. Had Solon been at Paris, since the revolution, 
he would have been guillotined for a rank aristocrat. 



189 

of age, the tears of parents, nothing could soften 
the hearts of these apostate wretches. We have 
seen enough of the suifermgs of the old clergy, in 
the first chapter of this work ; but there is yet 
one instance which I must quote. "I was at 
Trois Rivieres (says le voyageur de la Revolution) 
a little village in Picardy. I saw several women 
running by the inn where I had put up ; they all 
seemed much alarmed. I asked the landlord 
what was the matter : he told me that the revolu- 
tionary priest, provoked to find that none of the 
village attended at his mass, had been that morn- 
ing to Ville D^Eu for a party of national guards, 
to aid him in driving the former priest from a little 
cottage, where he and his mother had taken shel- 
ter. The man gave me a most affecting account 
of this good priest, who was upwards of four- 
score years of age, and who had been the rec- 
tor of that place for more than fifty years. On 
the day he was to deliver his cure into the hands 
of the apostate, he summoned his little flock to 
meet him in the church for the last time. Not a 
soul was absent, old or young. The women car- 
ried their infants in their arnls, and two old peo- 
ple, not able to walk, were carried on couches. 
My children^ says the old man, / have pressed 
your tender hands on the baptismal font : I have 
sung the requiem for the souls of your fathers : I 
must now hid you an eternal farewell^ deprived of 
the consolation of leaving my ashes amongst you* 
— Here he ceased : tears stifled his voice ; the sobs 
and cries of his audience rendered the scene too 
much for him. — While the landlord was speakings 



190 

we heard a discharge of muskets, and a loud 
shriek of women. We ran to the spot. The 
peasants of the village, about forty in number, 
had assembled round the cottage, with clubs, to 
defend their pastor ; but, the enemy having fire- 
arms, they had been obliged to give way, leaving 
two of their companions dead and several wound- 
ed. I now beheld a sight sufficient to melt the 
heart of a tiger. Two ruffians of the national 
guard were dragging out this venerable old man 
by the hair of his head, by those locks as white 
as snow. He had received a wound in his cheek, 
from which the blood ran down on his garments. 
In this situation was he led off, bare-headed and 
bare-footed, towards Ville D^Eu, while his poor 
old parent, who had been many years blind and 
dumb, remained on her bed, happily insensible of 
the sorrows of her son. As the villains pulled 
him along, all the words he was heard to utter, 
were. My Mother ! Oh ! My Mother !--The wo- 
men^and children of the village followed the es- 
cort with cries and lamentations, till the savages 
drove them back with the points of their bayo- 
nets." 

Nor were those of the laity spared, who re- 
sorted to the old clergy for the exercise of the 
rights which they looked upon as essential. A 
new married couple having refused to have the 
ceremony performed by one of the apostates, a 
party of his myrmidons broke in upon them, the 
wedding night. The husband made his escape : 
the wife, in a swoon, became the prey of a party. 



191 

They gratified their brutal passion, without gra- 
tifying their ferocity. They tore off her breasts, 
as a tiger might have done with his claws, and 
threw them on the floor. They then left her to 
wait till death relieved her from her horrible 
situation.^ 

I should have scrupled at inserting a fact like 
this, though taken from so respectable a work, if 
the former part of this volume did not contain 
others, if possible, surpassing it: I srj if possi- 
ble ; for I declare, I know not which is most 
shocking, the tearing off a womans breasts, or 
the ripping a child from her womb, and sticking 
it on the point of the bayonet. Indeed, the great- 
est part of the facts related here, are so much 
more shocking and terrific than any thing we 
have ever before had an idea of, that common 
murders appear as trifling. t 

By means like these, the old clergy and their 
adherents were extirpated, and religion along with 
them. The business of the new clergy (if the 

* See Hist, of the French Clergy, page 138.~I cannot help 
remarking here, that it is something wonderful this History is 
not more known in America. — It is a proof, among hundreds, 
how locked up we have been to every thing that might lead us 
to a just estimation of the French Revolution. — It is true, the 
greatest part of the News-papers have set their faces against 
truth ; but surely, where the press is free, we ought not to suffer 
ourselves to be kept in the dark by people who are, probably, 
paid for so doing. 

t See the Appendix, No. IX. 



192 

wretches deserve the name) was not to establish 
one church on the ruins of another : it would be 
as preposterous to suppose that an assembly of 
atheists and deists had any such intention, as to 
suppose that a horde of apostates were calculated 
for the work. These latter were, in fact, so many 
missionaries of blasphemy and murder, sent into 
the provinces purposely to destroy the ancient 
priesthood. The Assembly foresaw that, when 
that was done, their new priests would at any 
time become the apostles of infidelity. 

It must be confessed that these legislators did • 
not want for cunning : an elegant writer has lately 
called them " architects of ruin ;" and, indeed, 
they possessed the art of destroying in its utmost 
perfection. Their calculations with respect to 
their new priests were extremely just ; they came 
out to an unit. When they had annihilated their 
predecessors, they were not only ready to second 
the decrees for the abolition of Christianity alto- 
gether ; they were not only instrumental therein ; 
but they had led the way. Several began to 
teach the religion of Reason in the Jacobin clubs, 
of which they were all members, and even in the 
pulpit. The garb of a priest itself, became a 
burthen to them, and they humbly asked leave to 
quit it for the more honourable one of the national 
guard. The apostate bishop of Moulin, who had 
been consecrated by the unhallowed hands of 
Taillerand, wrote to the Convention that he offi- 
ciated with a pike and liberty cap, instead of the 
croiser and the mitre. It was this vile wretch, 



198 

who first caused to be written on the gate of the 
burying ground: '' This is the place of everlast- 
ing sleep, '''^ 

Three weeks after this communication of the 
bishop of Moulin, Gobet, the new bishop of Pa- 
ris, with his Grand-Vicars and three rcT^olution- 
arj priests, came to the hall of the legislators 
and there abdicated Christianity in form. They 
begged pardon of the injured nation for having 
so long kept them in the dark, by duping them 
into a belief of the divinity of an Impostor, whose 
religion they now threw off with abhorrence, re- 
solved in future, to acknowledge no other deity 
than Reason alone ! 

It was not more than four days after this that 
a pagan festival was held in the Cathedral church 
of Paris. A woman named Memoro, the wife 
of another man, but the strumpet of the vile 
Hebert, alias Father du Chene, was dressed up 
as the goddess of Reason, Her throne was of 
green turf; an altar was erected at some distance, 
on which the priests burnt incense, while the 
legislators, and the brutified Parisian herd were 
prostrated before the throne of the goddess Rea^ 
son, alias Memoro, alias du Chene. 

About this epoch appeared the paganish repub- 
lican calendar, with a decree ordering its adop- 
tion. This was intended to root from the poor 
tyrannized people, the very memory of religion ; 
to dry up the only source of comfort they had left. 

R 



194 

They had been robbed of all they possessed in 
this world, and their inexorable tyrants wished to 
rob them of every hope in the next. Some say 
that this calendar itself was composed by an apos- 
tate priest; others, that it was the work of a 
writer of farces, named Des Moulins. Whoever 
may be author, we know who has the honour of 
re-printing it, and retailing it in this country. 

It is true, the last mentioned acts, the consum- 
mation of the most horrid blasphemy that ever 
man was witness of, took place under the Con- 
vention ; but what were they more than a neces- 
sary consequence of the measures of the Con- 
stituent Assembly ? nay, the leaders in that As- 
sembly boasted, when they had obtained the de- 
cree against the non-juring priests, that they had 
tricked the people out of their religion, before 
they perceived it. Nor is there at this time one 
of those who voted for that decree, who will not 
tell you, that Christianity is a farce, fit only for 
the amusement of old folks, and that he rejoices 
in its abolition in France. This is not mere sur- 
mise. 

Indeed, that their successors have only fulfilled 
their wishes, in this respect, there can be no doubt, 
if any judgment of the wishes of men is to be 
formed from their principles, their words and 
their actions. Who, I ask, that wished to pre- 
serve religion, would have passed a decree for the 
expulsion of every priest that refused to forswear 
himself? who, that did not wish to destroy re- 



195 

iigion, would have passed a decree for committing 
it to the care of apostates ? Was it not clear, that 
such men would stick at nothing ? That at the 
nod of their masters, they would at any time be 
ready to blaspheme the God they pretended to 
adore ? On the contrary, the Assembly knew that 
there was no hope of their system taking root, 
while the ancient clergy remained in their cures. 
Among men, who gave up their all, and exposed 
themselves to almost certain death, rather than 
falsify their faith, they could not hope to find a 
Gobet. They could not hope to find supple vil- 
lains that would voluntarily depose the emblems 
of their religion. on the altar of a strumpet, and 
confess themselves to have been the crafty minis- 
ters of an arch impostor. 

The oath tendered to the clergy was the touch- 
stone ; it was to prove them ; to know whom the 
Assembly could depend on for the accomplish- 
ment of their projects, and whom they could not 
depend on. The enforcing of the oath was the 
last blow to public religion in France, and there- 
fore the destruction of that religion, with all its 
immoral and murderous consequences, is due to 
the Constitusnt Assembly, and to them alone. It 
is as nonsensical as unjust to accuse this or that 
faction, or even the Convention itself, of exchang- 
ing Christianity for a system of paganism ; in- 
fidels who adore an idol are as good as infidels 
who adore none ; and where is the difference, 
whether the adored idol be Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
or Madame Memoro ? An adulteress is as good a 
goddess as an adulterer is a god, at any time. 



196 

Let the reader now look back, and he will 
easily trace all the horrors of the French Revo- 
lution to the decrees of the Constituent Assembly. 
It was they that rent the government to pieces ; 
it was they that first broached the destructive doc- 
trine of equality ; it was they that destroyed all 
ideas of private property; and, finally, it was they 
that rendered the people hardened, by effacing 
from their minds every principle of the only re- 
ligion capable of keeping mankind within the 
bounds of justice and humanity. Look also at 
their particular actions, and you will see them 
breaking their oaths to their constituents and to 
their king ; you will see their agents driving peo- 
ple from their estates, beating and killing them ; 
you will see them surrounded with a set of hire- 
ling writers and assassins, employed to degrade 
and murder peaceable people, attached to the re- 
ligion of their forefathers; and you will see them 
not only pardoning murderers in spite of theii* 
poor humiliated monarch, but even receiving the 
assassins at their bar, covering them with ap- 
plauses, and instituting festivals in their honour. 
What have the members of the Convention and 
their agents done more than this ? They have 
murdered in greater numbers. True ; but what 
have numbers to do with the matter ? The prin- 
ciple on which those murders were committed, 
was ever the same ; it was more or less active as 
occasion required. The wants of the Conven- 
tion were more pressing than those of the Con- 
stituent Assembly. The Assembly were not driven 
to the expedient of requisitions, nor was the hour 



197 

jet arrived for the promulgation of the paganish 
calendar. Consequently, they met with less op- 
position, and therefore less murders were neces- 
sary ; but, had they continued their sittings to 
this day, the devastation of every kind would 
liave been the same that it has been. 

The whole history of the revolution presents 
us with nothing but a regular progress in robbery 
and murder. The first Assembly, for instance, 
begin by flattering the mob, wheedling their king 
out of his title and his power ; they then set him 
at defiance, proscribe or put to death his friends ; 
and then shut him up in his palace, as a wild 
beast in a cage. The second Assembly send a 
gang of ruffians to insult and revile him, and then 
they hurl him from his throne. The third Assem- 
bly cut his throat.* What is there in all this, 
but a regular and natural progression from bad 
to worse. And so with the rest of their abomi- 
nable actions. 

To throw the blame on the successors of the 

* List of the philosophers icho signed the order for the execu- 
tion of Louis the XVI. 

Roland, since cut his throat on the high road, his chattering 

political wife guillotined. 
Servan, guillotined. 
Le Brun^ guillotined. 
Claviere, (a Genevese) cut his throat in prison, and his wife 

took poison. 
There are two others, Bournonville and PacJce, who are not 
yet execute^. Robespierre died a little too soon for these. 

r2 



198 

first despotic Assembly, is such a perversion of 
reason, such an abandonment of truth, that no 
man, who has a single grain of sense, can hear 
of with patience. As well might we ascribe all 
the murders committed at Nantz to the under 
cut-throats, by whom they were perpetrated, and 
not to the Convention by whose order, and under 
whose protection, these cut-throats acted. The 
Constituent Assembly knew the consequences of 
their decrees, as well as Foucault (see page 89) 
knew the consequence of his order for throwing 
forty women from the cliff Pierre-moine into the 
sea ; and it is full as ridiculous to hear them pre- 
tend, that they did not wish those consequences 
to follow, as it would be to hear Foucault pre- 
tend, that he did not wish the forty women should 
be drowned. True, the Convention are guilty of 
every crime under heaven : assassins and blas- 
phemers must ever merit detestation and abhor- 
rence, from whatever motive they may act, or by 
whomsoever taught and instigated ; but still the 
pre-eminence in infamy is due to their teachers 
and instigators : the Convention is, in relation to 
the Constituent Assembly, what the ignorant, 
desperate bravo is, in relation to his crafty and 
skulking employer." 

* " Though the heroes who first strutted upon the stage, have 
been since then massacred, guillotined, put to flight, or have 
perished by their own hands, that does not prove that they 
were not exactly of the same i)and with those who have guillo- 
tined them or put them to flight : and in following them through 
their different windings, we shall see that they were all intrin- 
sically the same / that private interest and particular circum- 



199 

Before I conclude, it may not be improper, as 
I have hitherto spoken of the Constituent Assem- 
bly in a general way, to make some distinctions 
with respect to the persons who composed it. I 
am very far from holding them all up as objects 
of abhorrence, or even of censure. There were 
many, very many, men of great wisdom and vir- 
tue, who were elected to the States-General, and 
even who joined the Assembly, after it assumed 
the epithet National, It would be the height of 
injustice to reproach these men with the conse- 
quences of measures, which they opposed with 
such uncommon eloquence and courage. History 
will make honourable mention of their names, 
when the epitome 1 have here attempted will be 
h)st and forgotten. Suffice it then to say, that 
the weight of our censure, of the censure of all 
just and good men, ought to fall on those licen- 
tious politicans and inhdel philosophers alone, 
who sanctioned the decree for the annihilation of 
property and religion. 

Here, too, we ought to divest ourselves of eve- 
ry thing of a personal or party nature, and direct 
our abhorrence to principles alone. As to the 
actors, they have, in general, already expiated 
their wickedness or folly by the loss of their lives. 

stances only have made a difference ; that the same man assumf* 
ed the guise of a philosopher or an assassin, according to occa- 
sion ; and that the principle laid down by the first innovators, 
in the first moments of their power, led to the last and greatest 
crhnes of which the most bloody have been guilty." 

PiAYFAiR, page 83. 



200 

We have seen the Atheist Condorcet obliged to 
fly in disguise front the capital, the inhabitants of 
which he had corrupted, and by whom he had 
been adored as the great luminary of the age : 
we have seen him assume the garb and the sup- 
plicating tone of a common beggar, lurking in 
the lanes and woods, like a houseless thief, and, 
at last, literally dying in a ditch, leaving his car- 
case a prey to the fowls of the air, and his me- 
mory as a lesson to future apostles of anarchy and 
blasphemy.* Scores, not to say hundreds, of his 
coadjutors have shared a fate little different from 
his own ; and those who have not, can have little 
reason to congratulate themselves on their escape. 
The tornado they had raised for the destruction 
of others, has swept them from the seat of their 
tyranny, and scattered them over every corner of 
the earth. Those haughty usurpers who refused 
the precedence to the successors of Charle- 
magne, are now obliged to yield to a peasant or 
a porter. They who decreed that the '^ Folding- 
Doors of the Louvre should fly open at their ap- 
proach," are now glad to lift the latch of a wick- 
et, and bend their heads beneath the thatch of a 
cabin. And, what language can express the vex- 
ation, the anguish, the cutting reflexions, that 
must be the companions of their obscurity ! When 
they look back on their distracted country, when 
they behold the widows, the orphans, the thou- 
sands and hundreds of thousands of murdered 
victims, that it presents ; when they behold the 

* See the Appendix, No. X% 



201 

frantic people carrying the dagger to the hearts 
of their parents, nay, digging their forefathers 
from their graves, and throwing their ashes to the 
winds ; when they behold* all this, and reflect 
that it is the work of their own hands, well might 
they call on the hills to hide them. The torments 
of such an existence who can bear ? Next to the 
Wrath of heaven, the malediction of one's country 
is surely the most tremendous and insupportable. 



Now, what is the advantage we ought to de- 
rive from the aw^ful example before us ? — It ought 
to produce in us a v/atchfulness, and a steady 
resolution to oppose the advances of disorganizing 
and infidel principles. T am aware that it will 
be said by some, that all fear of the progress of 
these principles is imaginary ; but, constant ob- 
servation assures me, that it is but too well found- 
ed. Let any man examine the change in politi- 
cal and religious opinions, since the establishment 
of the general government, and particularly the 
change crept in along with our silly admiration 
of the French Revolution, and see if the result 
of his inquiries does not justify a fear of our 
falling under the scourge, that has brought a hap- 
py and gallant people on their knees, and left 
them bleeding at every pore. 

Unfortunatelv for America, Great Britain has 
thrown from her the principles of the French 
revolutionists with indignation and abhorrence. 
This, which one would imagine should have had 



202 

little or no influence on us, has served, in some 
measure, as a guide to our opinions, and has been 
one of the principle motives for our actions. A 
combination of circumstances, such as, perhaps, 
never before met together, has so soured the 
minds of the great mass of the people in this 
country, has worked up their hatred against Great 
Britain to such a pitch, that the instant that na- 
tion is named, they lose not only their temper 
but their reason also. The dictates of nature 
and the exercise of judgment are thrown aside : 
whatever the British adopt must be rejected, and 
whatever they reject must be adopted. Hence 
it is, that all the execrable acts of the French 
legislators, not forgetting their murders and their 
blasphemy, have met with the most unqualified 
applauses, merely because they were execrated 
in the island of Britain. 

The word Republic has also done a great deal. 
France is a Republic^ and the decrees of the legis- 
lators vvere necessary to maintain it a Republic. 
This word outweighs, in the estimation of some 
persons, (I wish I could say they are few in 
number) all the horrors that have been, and 
that can be, committed in that country. One 
of these modern republicans will tell you that 
he does not deny, that hundreds of thousands 
of innocent persons have been murdered in 
France ; that the people have neither reli- 
gion nor morals ; that all the ties of nature are 
rent asunder ; that the rising generation will be 
a race of cut-throats ; that poverty and famine 



2oa 

S'talk forth at large ; that the nation is half dep©- 
pulated ; that its riches, along with millions of 
the best of the people, are gone to enrich and 
aggrandize its enemies ; that its commerce, its 
manufactures, its sciences, its arts, and its honour, 
are no more ; but at the end of all this, he will 
tell jou that it must be happy, because it is a Re- 
public, I have heard more than one of these re- 
publican zealots declare, that he would sooner see 
the last of the French extirminated, than see them 
adopt any other form of government. Such a 
sentiment is characteristic of a mind locked up in 
savage ignorance ; and 1 would no more trust my 
throat within the reach of such a republican, than 
I w^ould within that of a Louvet, a Gregoire, or 
any of their colleagues. 

Our enlightened philosophers run on in a fine 
canting strain about the bigotry and ignorance of 
their ancestors ; but I would ask them, what 
more stupid, doltish bigotry can there be, than to 
make the sound of a word the standard of good 
or bad government ? what is there in the combina- 
tion of the letters which make up the word Re- 
public? what is there in the sound they produce, 
that the bellowing of it forth should compensate 
for the want of every virtue, and even for common 
sense and common honesty ? — It is synonymous 
with liberty. — Fatal error ! In the mouth of a tur- 
bulent demagogue, it is synonymous with liberty, 
and with every thing else that will please his 
hearers; but, with the man of virtue and sense, 
it has no more than its literal value ; that is, it 



204 

means, of itsetT, neither good nor evil. If we call 
our own government that of a Republic^ and judge 
of the meaning of the word by the effects of that 
government, it will admit of a most amiable in- 
terpretation ; but, if we are to judge of it bj what 
it has produced in France, it means all that is ru- 
inous, tyrannical, blasphemous and bloody. Last 
winter, one of these republican heroes in Con- 
gress, accused a gentleman from New England, 
of having adopted anti-repubhcan principles, be- 
cause he proposed something that seemed to mili- 
tate agaifist negro slavery I Thus, then, republi- 
canism did not mean liberty. In short, it means 
any thing : it is a watch word of faction, and if 
ever our happy and excellently constituted repub- 
lic should be overturned, it will be done under the 
mask of republicanism. 

Let us, then, be upon our guard ; let us look 
to the characters and actions of men, and not to 
their professions ; let us attach ourselves to things 
and not to words ; to sense and not to sound. 
Should the day of requisition and murder arrive, 
our tyrants calling themselves republicans will 
be but a poor consolation to us. The loss of 
property, the pressure of want, beggary, will not 
be less real because flowing from republican de- 
crees. Hunger pinches the republican, the cold 
blast cramps his joints as well as those of other 
men. This word does not soften the pangs of 
death. The keen knife will not produce a delec- 
table sensation because drawn across the throat 
Iby a republican ; nor will the word republican * 



205 

parry a bullet, or render a flaming fire a bed of 
down. When Monsieur Berthier had the ghastly 
head of his father pressed against his lips, when 
his own heart was afterwards torn from his living 
body, and placed, all reeking and palpitating, on 
a table before a committee of magistrates, the 
agonies of his mind and of his mangled carcass 
were not assuaged by the shouts of his republi- 
can murderers. 

Shall we say that these things never can take 
place among us ? Because we have hitherto pre» 
served the character of a pacific and humane peo« 
pie, shall we set danger at defiance ? Though we 
are not Frenchmen, we are men as well as they, 
and consequently are liable to be misled, and even 
to be sunk to the lowest degree of brutality, as 
they have been. They, too, had an amiable cha- 
racter : what character have they now ? The same 
principles brought into action among us would 
produce the same degradation. I repeat, we are 
not what we were before the French Revolution. 
Political projectors from every corner of Europe, 
troublers of society of every description, from the 
whining philosophical hypocrite to the daring 
rebel and more daring blasphemer, have taken 
shelter in these States. Will it be pretended 
that the principles and passions of these men 
have changed with the change of air ? it would 
be folly to suppose it. 

Nor are men of the same stamp wanting among 
the native Americans. There is not a single ac- 

S 



206 

tion of the French revolutionists, but has been 
justified and applauded in our public papers, and 
many of them in our public assemblies. Anar- 
chy has its open advocates. The divine author 
of our religion has been put upon a level with 
the infamous Marat. We have seen a clergyman 
of the episcopal church publicly abused, because 
he had recommended to his congregation to be- 
ware of the atheistical principles of the French. 
Even their calender, the frivolous offspring of in- 
fidelity is proposed for our imitation. Where 
persons, whose livelihood depends on their daily 
publications, are to be found, who are ever ready 
to publish articles of this nature, it were the 
grossest folly not to believe, that there are hun- 
dreds and thousands to whom they give plea- 
sure.* But, we are not left to mere surmise 
here. How many numerous companies have is- 
sued under the form of toasts, sentiments offen- 
sive to humanity and disgraceful to our national 
character ? We have seen the guillotine toasted 
to three times three cheers, and even under the 
discharge of cannon. If drunken men, as is 
usually the case, speak from the bottom of their 
hearts, what quarter should we have to expect 
from wretches like these. It must be allowed, 

* It is a truth that no one will deny, that the News-papers of 
this country have become its scourge. I speak with a few ex- 
ceptions. It is said that they enlighten the people 5 but their 
light is like the torch of an incendiary, and the one has the same 
destructive effect on mind as the other has on matter. The 
whole study of the editors seem to be to deceive and confound. 
One would think they were hired by some malicious dettion, to 
turn the brains and ccrrupt the hearts of theij: readers. 



207 

too, that where the cannons were fired to give 
eclat to such a sentiment, the convives were not 
of the most despicable class. And, what would 
the reader say, were 1 to tell him of a member of 
Congress, who wished to see one of those mur- 
derous machines, employed for lopping oif the 
heads of aristocrats^ permanent in the State- 
House yard of the City of Philadelphia ? 

If these men of blood had succeeded in plung- 
ing us into a war ; if they had once got the sword 
into their hands, they would have mowed us down 
like stubble. The w ord aristocrat would have 
been employed to as good account here, as ever 
it has been in France. We might, ere this, have 
seen our places of worship turned into stables ; 
we might have seen the banks of the Delaware, 
like those of the Loire, covered with human car- 
casses, and its waters tinged with blood : ere this 
we might have seen our parents butchered, and 
even the head of our admired and beloved Presi- 
dent rolling on a scaffold. 

I know the reader will start back with horror. 
His heart will tell him, that it is impossible. But, 
once more, let him look at the example before us. 
The man who, in 1788, should have predicted 
the fate of the last humane and truly patriotic 
Louis, would have been treated as a wretch or a 
madman. The attacks on the character and con- 
duct of the irreproachable Washington^ have been 
as bold if not bolder, than those which led to the 
downfall of the unfortunate French monarch. 



208 

His impudent and unprincipled enemies have re- 
presented him as cankered with every vice that 
mark a worthless tyrant ; they have called him 
the betrayer of the liberties of his country, and 
have even drawn up and published articles of ac- 
cusation against him ! Can it then be imagined, 
that, had they possessed the power, they w anted 
the will to dip their hands in his blood ? I am fully 
assured, that these wretches do not make an 
hundred thousandth part of the people of the 
Union : the name of Washington is as dear and 
dearer, to all good men, than it ever was. But, 
of what consequence is their affection to him, of 
what avail to themselves, if they suffer him to be 
thus treated, without making one single effort to 
defeat the projects of his infamous traducers ? It 
is not for me to dictate the method of doing this ; 
but sure I am, that had the friends of virtue and 
order shown only a hundredth part of the zeal n 
the cause of their own country, as the enemies of 
both have done in the cause of France, we should 
not now havef to lament the existence of a hard- 
ened and impious faction, whose destructive prin- 
ciples, if not timely and firmly opposed, may one 
day render the annals of America as disgraceful 
as those of the French Revolution. 



ri> fej 



Q) 



THE greatest part of the following facts 
are taken from Playf air's History of J4,- 

COBINISMe 



s 2 



210 
No I. 



^vcuuni i 


jf me JLiX 


ecuiions m ± 


^ans om 


iy, during 




the month of July ^ 


1794. 






Clerg-y, 


Nobles. 


People. 


Total. 


1st July. 


1 





13 


14 


2 


3 


5 


22 


30 


4 


1 


4 


21 


26 


5 


3 


7 


18 


28 


6 


5 


40 


23 


68 


7 


2 


22 


6 


30 


9 


6 


21 


32 


59 


10 


. 7 


14 


*23 


44 


11 


1 


2 


3 


6 


12 





6 


22 


28 


13 


8 


8 


22 


38 


15 


3 


8 


19 


30 


16 


4 


6 


21 


31 


17 


I 


1 


38 


40 


19 


2 


12 


15 


29 


20 


1 


4 


9 


14 


21 


4 


11 


14 


29 


22 





26 


20 


46 


23 


10 


21 


24 


55 


24 


^ 


18 


12 


36 


25 


8 


23 


6 


37 


26 


9 


30 


14 


53 


27 


3 


16 


25 


44 


28 








25 


25 


29 








71 


71 


30 








12 


12 




88 


305 


530 


923 



This list is taken from Plat/fair^ who seems to have had the 
most minute information on every subject. The numbers for 
the three last days are taken from the written account, in which 



211 

the rank of the sufferers is not specified ; they are, therefore, 
all brought under the head of people. 

This list resembles a return of cattle for the slaughter houses ; 
and, indeed, Flayfair observes in one place, that the number 
of persons guillotined exceeded that of the oxen killed in the 
city of Paris, for a considerable time. 

What honour does a list like this reflect on the " enlightened 
eighteenth century /" How far does it surpass the tables of 
Euclid and other old fools of times past ! When any impudent 
democrat talks about the excellence of his liberty and equality, 
the reader will do well to hold up this butcher's bill to him. 
There ! sans-culotte, wipe off that score, and then I'll listen to 
you. 

If any proof were yet wanting of the horrid murders at 
Nantz being agreeable to the will of the Convention, we have it 
in the following fact : the members of the bloody committee at 
Nantz, Goullin, Pinard, Grand Maison, Sj'c. are now living ; 
all except Grand Maison, were at Nantz when the last letters 
came away. This last named monster was at Rennes. — The 
trial at Paris was a mere mockery, in order to amuse the poor 
brutiiied populace. 

No. II. 

It is known, that a foolish girl, by some indiscreet questions 
put to a sentinel at Robespierre's door, rendered herself sus- 
pected of an intention to kill this monster, as Charlotte Cordee 
had another. The British government was declared her ac- 
complice in the plot against his '^precious life," and it was 
decreed that no quarter should be given to English or Han- 
overian prisoners. 

The slavish herd of Paris came crowding to the tyrant with 
addresses on his escape. Robespierre now thought fit to make 
a speech, setting forth that there was a God, and a decree was 
passed, ordering a festival to his honour. That sacrifices might 
not be wanting, the tyrant and his colleagues (aZ/ the Conven- 
tion) ordered a grand guillotining. The whole family of the 
poor girl, her father, brother, uncles, aunts, all were sent to the 
place of execution : so that, as a sort of atonement for the deed 
intended, seventy -tivo victims mounted the scaffold, amongst 
whom were twenty-one ancient judges of the Parliament of 
Thoulouse. 



212 

It has appeared since, by the declaration of Fouquier Tin- 
ville, who was public accuser at this time, that Robespierre 
wished more people to be executed on this occasion, in order 
to give the affair greater eclat. The victims were treated with 
particular marks of infamy, each had on a red shirt in sign of 
assassination. 

This was not more than sixty days before the tyrant himself, 
mounted the scaffold, and was executed amidst the joyous ac- 
clamations of the base and infamous populace that had congra- 
tulated him on the preservation of his " precious lifeP Pari' 
sian and base bloody monster^ will ever be synonymous. 

No. III. 

On many of the public roads the passengers stopped the 
Diligence, in order to sleep all night, when they pleased ; and 
what was more, proved to the magistrates of the town where 
they stopped, that as they paid, there was no reason why they 
should submit to the arbitrary orders of a conductor. It was 
the people, a part of the Sovereign, that was in the Diligence, 
and the magistrates were glad, as well as inclined, to decide in 
favour of the Sovereign against the poor humiliated public func- 
tionary, who conducted this unruly portion of multifarious ma- 
jesty. 

No. IV. 

I have already observed, that Barnave justified this murder 
in the Assembly, when he was not only not reproved, but ap- 
plauded. 

Let us now see, according to Playfair, (page 200) what the 
magistrates and commandant of the forces did to prevent these 
murders. 

Foulon was first carried to the Hotel de Ville, and from 
thence sent by Mr. de la Fayette, who commanded the national 
troops, under a feeble escort, to prison ; but there were men 
among the crowd whose purpose was to prevent his arriving 
there. 

The mob were debating about murdering Berthier before he 
should enter the town-house ; this, however, was difficult to 
do, for there were more than twenty thousand national guards 
present. The general, La Fayette, with all the cool delibera- 



213 

tion of a philosophical republican hero, soon settled the difficul- 
ty. About five hours before, he had seen the miserable end of 
Foulon, whom he had sent to prison in broad day, yet he sent 
Berthier in the night to prison, with a small guard only, and 
with orders to that guard, to do no violence to the people. 

No. V. 

The insurrections, massacres, and cruelties, of St. Domingo, 
would make a large volume, says Flay fair, \^ere they to be 
detailed. The Abbe Gregoire and Brissot, were two of the 
most active instigators of the revolt of the negroes and mulat- 
toes. Gregoire, who was a member of the Assembly, when he 
heard of a massacre, in which the negroes had for their standard 
a white infant impalled on a spear, declared it was " le plus 
heaujour de sa vie^'' (the happiest day of his life.) This phi- 
losophic cannibal was at supper when the news was brought, 
and he and his friends finished the evening with mutual con- 
gratulations and joy on the success of their plans. 

Some few days after the destruction of Cape Franpois, 
whence a great number of Whites had fled to the country 
places round, about forty women, but a ievf days before ladies 
of the first rank, had taken shelter in the buildings of a plan- 
tation. The blacks came, some they killed, others tliey treat- 
ed still more cruelly ; some few were accidentally spared. 
The indecencies ofiered to these ladies will not admit of de- 
scription. Let any woman, let any mother conceive their sit- 
uation by the following fact. — A lady who had a child with 
her of about two years old, tied it round her waist, and jumped 
into a reservoir near the building, where she found in death a 
happy refuge from democratic brutality. 

These facts the compiler had from a French lady now in 
Philadelphia : one of the three who had the good fortune to 
escape. 

At a plantation on the plain of Cape Francois, the mulattoes 
put several persons between boards, tied fast together, and thus 
sawed them across.— I am at a loss to discover which is worst, 
French or African barbarity. 

No. VI. 

The nobles and clergy who could not be expected to be 



214 

Inends of a revolution that had robbed and ruined them, were 
fixed upon as the ktent cause of the public misfortunes; and 
this belief, hke many others, became general, not because it 
was well supported by facts, but, because it became general, 
seemed to need no facts to support it. In the National Assem- 
bly, in all the democratical papers and clubs, the nobles and 
clergy were accused without proofs, as being a matter of course, 
and that needed none ; at the same time, when any circum- 
stance that could be construed unfavourably for them took 
place, it was employed to augment the general fury. Of this 
species was an unfortunate explosion of powder at the house 
of a member of the parliament of Besanpon, whilst he was 
giving a feast to a number of his neighbours. It was immedi- 
ately reported that this unfortunate man had blown up his house 
with design, and a banditti of patriots vented their revenge for 
this supposed treason by actually burning and pillaging a num- 
ber of gentlemen's country seats, not one of whom met with 
either protection or indemnification from the Assembly ; from 
the leaders of that happy, that glorious government, which 
Doctor Priestly and his friends prefer to that of England, un- 
der which they obtained both. 

Though the barbarities at that time exercised are now almost 
forgotten on account of that terrible Series of crimes with 
which they have been followed 5 they are, nevertheless, good 
specimens of democracy in its moderate moments. A few 
of these first essays may not be useless. They are taken from 
the news-papers published at the time, and some of them from 
reports laid before the National Assembly, and they are all of 
them to be found in the Memoire de M. Lally Tollendal, who 
was himself a friend to the revolution. 

In Languedoc, M. de Barras was cut to pieces in the pre- 
sence of his wife, who was far advanced in her pregnancy, and 
died with the fright.* 

At Mans, Mr. de Montesson was shot, after witnessing the 
murder of his father-in-law. 

Madame de Battenay was forced to give up the title' deeds 
of her estates, by an enraged mob, who menaced her with im- 
mediate death, and held an axe over her head. 

* This refinement in cruelty, is a certain proof that the French 
delight in blood. Men who kill their enemies, as such, are content 
to dispatch them out of the way. Savages only take pleasure in 
their agonies. .^ 



215 

The title deeds of a gentleman were demanded of his stew- 
ard, who refusing to deliver them, was carried to a fire, ^d his 
feet were burnt off to oblige him to give them up. 

The Chevalier d'Ambli, was taken from his house, dragged 
naked through the village, his hair and eye-brows we're then 
torn off; he was thrown upon a dunghill, whilst his tormentors 
danced round him. 

Mr. de Monjustin, who had, with twenty other gentlemen, 
signed voluntarily a declaration very favourable to the people, 
was suspended for more than an hour over a well, while his en- 
emies were disputing which sort of death he should suffer. 

We almost think, says the historian, that we are recounting 
the cruelties of the Spaniards upon the inhabitants of Mexico 
and Peru : but no, the case was worse still. The followers of 
Cortes were but a set of adventuring free-booters, who had left 
their country to seek gold at any price. The disciples of the 
modern philosophers acted thus with their countrymen and 
their neighbours. 

These scenes took place in the years 1790 and 1791, at the 
moment when the Revolution was called glorious ! Can it be 
believed that the people of America, renowned for the mildness 
of their disposition, would have approved of this revolution, 
would have joined Doctors Price and Priestly in celebrating it, 
had they been duly informed of these its horrible consequences ? 
And, can it be believed, that they will still approve of it, when 
such an endless list of crimes and cruelties is now added to the 
account ? 

No. VIJ. 

The sovereign people, though extremely free, felt now and 
then the worm o-i hunger. It was natural for them to lay the 
scarcity of provisions on the aristocrats / they did so, and a 
w^oman who was waiting for bread before a baker's door, ac- 
cused him of being one, and said he threw his loaves into the 
river. This charge, all improbable as it was, was looked upon 
as sufficient. In a moment he was dragg^ed from his wife and 
family, was hanged, and the patriotic mob, thinking the wife of 
an aristocrat deserved httle better treatment than her husband, 
brought his bloody head and threw it down before the affrighted 
woman, who was in the last month of her pregnancy. 



216 

The king stood god-father to the child of the baker, that was 
born soon after, and gave the widow some pecuniary aid. The 
other constituted authorities, as they called themselves, were 
employed in works superior to that of justice or charity. It 
would have been unworthy of their dignity to stoop from the 
grand employment of making twenty-four millions of people 
happy and free (by murdering and imprisoning a part, and 
robbing the others,) in order to attend to the claims of justice 
in favour of a widow and a child whom their own emissaries 
had treated with such barbarity. 

Rabaut, the vile insurrection historian, Rabautde St. Etienne, 
varnishes this affair over, justifies the Assembly and their infer- 
nal agents. Rabaut little thought that his turn to mount the 
scaffold was not very distant. 

No. VIII. 

It will be difficult for posterity to believe to what a ridiculous 
length the enthusiasm of equality and national sovereignty was 
carried. It will never be credited certainly, that the newly en- 
lightened people affected to call the obedience of the child to 
the father, a remnant of feudal slavery. Thus one of the most 
sacred bonds of the human race was loosened, and that for the 
first time: hitherto, by polished a»d by savage nations, by the 
Christian and the infidel, the sacred rights of a lather had never 
been disputed. The philosophy and knowledge of the eigh- 
teenth century had made a new discovery, and the French re- 
volutionists were sufficiently depraved to reduce it to practice. 

The savage democrats seemed to delight in murdering the 
weak, the aged, and infirm. 

On the 17th of July, 1791? just after the king's return from 
Varennes, a mob of patriots went to the altar of the federation 
to sign a petition, as they called it, to the Assembly, by which 
they declared, that they never would be governed by Louis 

XVI. 

Days like this were ever begun by shedding blood ; fleshing 
Ihe hell-hounds, as it were. An invalid, who liad lost his leg 
in fighting for kings,|was an agreeable sacrifice. This poor fel- 
low was found lying drunk or asleep with a hair dresser, under 
the altar. They were both murdered as a prelude to signing 
the petition. 



m 



No. IX. 

Among the prisoners at the chatelet was a woman who for- 
merly sold flowers, and who, in a fit of jealousy, had mutilated 
her lover, one of the revolted French guards, in a very barba- 
rous and shameful manner. The rage of the murderers was re- 
doubled on seeing the woman who had thus murdered one of 
their companions ; she was tied to a stake, her feet nailed to 
the ground, her breasts cut off with a sabre, and then tortured 
with lighted torches and pointed instruments, in a more cruel 
and brutal manner than it would be fit to describe. This was 
in the month of September, 1792, at the end of three years ex- 
perience in the art of cruelty. 

No. X. 

My readers must all recollect Monsr. Bailly, a man that ren- 
•dered himself so famous by being president of the National Con- 
stituent Assembly when they took the oath never to separate, 
till a constitution was framed, and who, as Mayor of Paris, af- 
terwards insulted the fallen monarch. 

This man had long lived on the bounty of the king, and it 
was thus he repaid him. Well, this Bailly was at last " be- 
headed with all the marks of ignomy which the Parisians could 
invent. La Fayette would have shared the same fate had he 
staid in France ; and certainly the fathers of the principle of 
insurrection could not find fault with the practice. Those, 
therefore, who pity Mr. Bailly when they see him carried to 
the place of execution in a dung cart, clothed with a red shirt, 
and a red flag dragging in the dirt by way of ignomy, may con- 
sole themselves by considering that he and La Fayette had beea 
the first protectors of insurrection, and that they only wanted 
to oppose it, when it came to be directed against themselves.'' 



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